History of Beauty

Renaissance

• In the 15th century….

Renaissance

• upper-class ladies of northern Europe painfully plucked their hairline to make their foreheads seem higher, and scraped their hair back under an elaborate headdress.

Renaissance

• Blond hair was considered to be a sign of beauty and high class. As a result, both men and women attempted to turn their hair blond by using bleach, saffron or onion skin dye, or, in the case of Italian women, by sitting for hours in a crownless hat in the sun.

Elizabethan

• In the 16th century…

Elizabethan

• After Francis I of France accidentally burned his hair with a torch, men began to wear short hair and grew short beards and mustaches.

• Queen Elizabeth was instrumental in setting the female trends for this era (thus the name).

Elizabethan

• Society women copied her naturally pale complexion and red hair, using white powder in great abundance, along with red wigs. 

• The most successful means for re-creating Elizabeth's pallor, unfortunately, was ceruse, or white lead, which was later discovered to be poisonous. 

Eighteenth century

• In the 18th century…

Eighteenth century

• Fashionable wealthy men wore white-powdered wigs tied back into a long braid at the back of the neck and encased in a black silk bag, or tied with a black bow.

• Society women had trim, crimped or curled heads, powdered and decorated with garlands or bows. 

Eighteenth century

• By the 1770s, coiffures built over horsehair pads or wire cages and powdered with starch were all the rage.

• Some extended three feet in the air and had springs to adjust the height. They were extravagantly adorned with feathers, ribbons, jewels, and even ships, gardens and menageries.

Victorian

• In early 19th century…

Victorian

• The puritanical Victorian era advocated a modest, natural beauty, restrained and without makeup. 

• Middle- and upper-class women used cosmetics less, but did not abandon them completely. Beyond face powders, more audacious colored makeup was reserved for prostitutes and actresses, who wore it only on stage.

Victorian

• Society placed great emphasis on hygiene and health, and many women's magazines warned against the toxic qualities of lead-based industrial cosmetics.

• Beginning in the 1840s, women's heads were sleek and demure, the hair oiled and smoothed down over the temples with long sausage curls at the side and later with a heavy knot of curls or plaits in back.

Victorian

• In the 19th century men tended to keep their hair relatively short, sometimes curled and dressed with macassar oil.

• Most men wore some variety of mustache, sideburns or beard. 

1920s

• During the "Roaring Twenties," societal trends reacted against the puritanical Victorian standards of beauty.

1920s

• Popular new short "bobbed," waved or shingled hairstyles symbolized the growing freedom of women.

• The impact of cinema was felt for the first time, as women increasingly took their beauty cues from film stars such as Louise Brooks and Clara Bow.

1920s

• The heavy use of makeup also returned to fashion in this era. Generally, white women applied pale powder and cream rouge circles to the cheeks, plucked their eyebrows and penciled in thin arches, and painted their lips very red, emphasizing the cupid's bow of the upper lip.

1940s

• Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood starlets continued to set the trends in women's fashion.

1940s

• Longer, more feminine hairstyles became popular again, and women immediately copied Bette Davis' curls, Betty Grable's topknot with ringlets, and Rita Hayworth's gleaming waves. 

• Veronica Lake created a sensation by wearing a lock of hair that covered one eye.

1940s

• The hairstyle that most symbolized the era, however, was parted on the side, with soft curls falling over the shoulder.

• Also, for the first time, tanned skin (for both men and women) began to be perceived as a symbol of high class — again showing the influence of screen stars on standards of beauty.

1960s

• In the 1960s women were once again moving out of the domestic sphere and into the workplace, pursuing careers as well as an education. 

1960s

• As a result, in the early to mid-1960s women reacted against the time-consuming, complex hairstyles of the '50s and opted for more practical short styles (often variations of the 1920s bob), or long, straight hair.

1960s

• There was only one makeup look throughout the 1960s: dark eyes paired with pale lips (or, by the late '60s, no makeup at all). 

• Popular culture, especially rock 'n' roll, gained ascendancy in generating standards of fashion and beauty.

1960s

• When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, their "mop tops" created a revolution in men's hairstyles — making long hair fashionable for the first time since the 18th century.

• The influence of psychedelics and the hippie movement advocated a natural, wild look for men and women and a complete rejection of cosmetics.

1980s

• In the 1980s the "age of excess" was easily translated into hairstyles, in general — the bigger, the better. 

1980s

• Pop stars such as Madonna and Cyndi Lauper popularized a style that included heavy makeup with vibrant neon colors and intentionally messed-up and off-colored hair.

• Michael Jackson sported the "jheri curl," a sparkling wet-looking, heavily processed version of the Afro.

1990s

• In the 1990s standards of beauty were incredibly diverse and constantly changing.

1990s

• Model Kate Moss created a disturbing standard of extreme thinness, sometimes referred to as "heroin chic" from the strung-out, emaciated appearance of the face and body.

• The "grunge" movement in rock music popularized an unkempt, natural style in opposition to the heavily artificial looks of the '80s.

1990s

• Long, matted and unstyled hair characterized the grunge look. Tongue, eyebrow and nose piercings (for both men and women) also came into vogue in the '90s and even crossed into the "mainstream" of youth culture.

• Jennifer Aniston of the sitcom Friends created a brief hairstyle fad with her modern version of the '60s shag. 

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