The World’s Oldest Obsession

Marie Antoinette and other 18^th century royals were known for their sky-high headdress and grandiose wardrobes. Historic paintings and etchings show how women extended themselves vertically with wigs, hair pads, pomades, dust and other items such as navy warships, flowers and animals. 

It is even reported that once a woman had a three-foot creation upon her head that included a birdcage with a live, chirping bird inside. During this time, the potato, yes the potato, was feared to cause leprosy. In fact, the royals banned the potato from Burgundy, France in 1619. It took a soldier and some pomade to make the potato en vogue again.

A French chemist named Antoine August Parmentier served in the Seven Years War and lived off of potatoes while in captivity in Prussia. After a while, he began to love the spawned spud and when he returned to France, he made it his mission to introduce it back into French society. Parmentier was well connected and one night, he brought King Louis XVI a bouquet of potato flowers. 

Knowing how much his wife, Marie Antoinette, loved to dress her hair with flowers and vegetables, he gave her the bouquet and sure enough she put the potato flowers in her hair for a big event. Immediate after that, potato flowers became the latest fashion accessory. Parmeniter was a PR genius and started to create lavish potato dinners for men like Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier. Parmeniter continued to promote the potato and soon he was granted permission to plant an acre of potatoes in the French countryside. He was a smart guy and instructed guards to watch over his crops knowing that the poor would steal the crops after the guards went home. Soon potatoes were being planted all over France and became one of France’s biggest exports.

Love her or hate her but you must admit that Anne Boleyn shook up 16^th century England and changed the course of religious history forever. If you don’t know anything about her, just know that she was the second and most famous wife of Henry VIII, who divorced his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, in order to marry her and produce a male heir. While being married to Henry for about 1000 days, she managed to get Henry excommunicated from the Catholic Church, had several miscarriages and eventually was beheaded for incest, adultery and treason (these crimes have never been proven).  During her marriage, she also managed to give birth to a baby girl who grew up to be one of the most powerful English Monarchs in history, Queen Elizabeth I. At this time in history, the ideal woman had light hair, fair skin, and a voluptuous figure. Anne was the complete opposite and was an exotic young woman who was very thin with dark eyes and long dark hair. She was also very confident, witty, intelligent and extremely talented at music and dance. Men loved her and women wanted to be like her because she created her own special style by adopting French fashions and customs into English court life. Everything she did was unusual for a woman at that time, including playing cards and winning money off everyone, even the king. Anne was a fashion icon and one of her most precious accessories was her very famous “B” necklace. 

This pendent was so distinctive and became her trademark. I have read a lot about Anne and many historians claim that Anne wore this necklace to cover a large mole on her neck. There are also reports that Anne had moles, warts, extra fingers but people who tried to prove that she was a witch probably fabricated these stories. No one knows what happened to this necklace but the trend still lives on today and you can see the same necklace on Ugly Betty and in the most recent Winter catalogue from Anthropologie. You can also order your own exact replica from Parish Relics for $192, click here for more information- love, drama and murder not included. 

Prince Charles’ 60^th birthday was on Friday and last night he celebrated with celebrities, family, friends, comedians, artists and writers at his party in Gloucestershire.

This may be the longest time someone has trained for their future role and it doesn’t look like he will get the job soon because Queen Elizabeth, who is 82, is very healthy and very active. 

I will write about her soon, but I want to use this blog to write about the original Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth I. Where do I begin…I will probably cover Queen Elizabeth in many posts because there is so much to write about her. For now, I am going to skip her terrible childhood and her life as a prisoner ( by Queen Mary, her sister!)  and just focus on a time in her life when she was a strong, powerful Queen and a fashion icon in the 16th century.

When it came to fashion, Queen Elizabeth was just as grandiose as her father, King Henry VIII. She definitely spoiled herself with silks, satins and jewels for all of those years being deprived as a child, but she also used her style for political reasons. She wore luxurious and ornate dresses but the most impressive thing was that she organized and documented every item of clothing she had. She documented the types of fabrics, who she got the fabric from, the amounts of fabrics, embellishments, costs, dates, she even wrote down what the dresses were used for. Because of Elizabeth’s fashion diary, we know what fashion was like during Elizabethian England.

Elizabeth also influenced beauty. She had fiery red hair and soon red hair became in fashion. Women wanted to have red hair, so they used a powder made of sulfur and safflower petals to color their hair. This was a dangerous concoction and caused headaches, nausea, and frequent nosebleeds.  Below is a photo of Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I.

        

During this time, the ideal woman had a pale and very white complexion. Poor women worked outside and had a sun-kissed look so the whiter the complexion, the richer and more noble a woman was. In order to exaggerate this look, the wealthy and noble used a mixture of white lead and vinegar. Unfortunately, this was a deadly and poisonous mixture…

Everyone is talking about Angelina winning an Oscar for her performance,but I think the fashion and beauty deserves an Academy Award. Ladylike glamour, red red red lips, dropped-waisted dresses, finger waves, and it wasn’t just the women either. Men wore thick wool suits, knickers and long socks. Even the casual looks were formal and very beautiful.

Josephine Baker and Louise Brooks were just two of the biggest style influencers and since movies were becoming an established medium, celebrities spread their style to everyone.

The chemise replaced the corset and for the first time in history, legs were uncovered! Some other interesting facts about this period:

• It was very chic to apply lipstick in public  
• Clara Bow was the “It Girl” 
• Cosmetic companies started to advertise  
• Jean Patou invented suntan oil in 1927 
• Favorite magazines of the decade were Vogue, Harpers and Life  

All of my good friends know that I am OBSESSED with the Royal families of England, France and Spain. Their influence, style, fashion was so important and I will spend 90% of my time writing about it. So of course, I must talk about Wallis Simpson and her influence on beauty culture. Wallis Simpson was the American divorcee who created a crisis in the UK. The King fell in love with her and was abdicated in December 1936 so that he could marry her.

The Royal family despised her and people were fascinated with her. She wasn’t as beaiutiful or brillitant as Grace Kelly but she had a major influence on style. She wasn’t exactly a role model, but she was a style icon… She is also the woman who said ‘a woman can never be too rich or too thin’. She was elegant and simple but added spunk with color, exotic materials, and accessories. She knew what looked good on her and even had her dresses created with complicated infrastructures that prevented the fabric from moving without her. She was also the woman who wore hot pants to cha cha in Paris. Did I mention that she was in her 70’s when she did that?