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I am genuinely excited when I see the words ‘Elizabethan’ and ‘Tudors’ appear on our lesson PowerPoint. As a child, I was completely obsessed with the Tudors. It has and will remain one of my favourite eras of history to study. I have seen some of the 2nd year’s work in one of the ‘Welcome Talks’ and I love the idea of making Elizabethan beauty ideals modern.

 It was a pivotal era for beauty and we still keep some of the traits in beauty habits today. Prior to the Elizabethan error it was always seen as distasteful for a woman to wear cosmetics. Some of the only women who wore make up would have been prostitutes. If you look at earlier portraits of women such as Anne Boleyn, she didn't fit what was traditionally called beautiful. She didn't have fair hair, light skin or blue eyes. Anne Boleyn is shown in this portrait that was painted by an unknown artist, to have dark hair and dark eyes and no make up or rouge on her face. Yet she was still desirable to the king.

At primary school we were taught dances from the Tudor times, they weren’t very strenuous and they were more dainty and hard minimal contact. I remember these because of the dresses Upper Class Tudors would wear. There was one dance called a Pavan which was named because it was said the dresses of the wealthy women reminded people of a peacock’s tail. Many dances would be learned in other countries such as Italy, Spain and France and then they would be taught to the court.

Just like dancing, keeping up to date with fashion trends and beauty products was due to other countries. Products would have been brought in from other countries and then gifted or sold to the nobles. They would then have started their own trend within the courts that they resided in.

I've got some great ideas for this that I have jotted down in my notebook. It's amazing how inspiration comes to you at the most peculiar of times and most random times. I’ve been standing in the queue waiting for my coffee before my lecture starts and just seeing the till roll coil up on itself has made me think about the curl it makes.

What I’m looking forward to the most in the unit is the research. I find it absolutely fascinating how must social standing played a part in hair and beauty. Poor people would be out at work all day in the fields or street so they would be tanned. In turn this made the nobles want to obtain a pale look. Tanned was associated with common and working class, so they would concoct their very often poisonous cosmetics because not many people have a snow white complexion.

After hunting in the library I have found some really helpful books that in their introductions looking into the historical value of cosmetic practice. The one I was after has been booked out and there’s only one copy in the library, so I just picked up a few different books and their brief historical sections have been very insightful.

During the reigning years of Elizabeth I, she is always seen to have her white skin that she had in her coronation portrait. I think it's important that we take into account the loss of pigmentation in the paint. The colours have faded so we lose the original vibrancy of the paintings. This in turn means the red on the cheeks and lips is quite tame to what it may originally have been.

I know that religion was a massive part of the Tudor and Renaissance periods. 
'It was not until the first Crusades that the parochial societies of Briton and Europe were re-introduced to consumption behaviours forgotten during the Dark Ages. The soldiers returned from their eastern destinations with perfumes, unguents, cosmetics and recipes with associated beauty practices that their wives readily embraced (A History of Make-Up Maggie Angeloglou, 1970)
'In Venice, even a secret society dedicated to discovering new make-up methods was formed, with notable figures such as Isabella Cortese and Catherine de’Medici being involved. Catherine’s realm of influence is believed to extend to the use of cosmetics in France where she demanded that they be used at court despite complaints by the Church. Interestingly, the ladies of the time followed Catherine’s lead as opposed to that of the poets or prelates (Corson, 1972). '

So to defy the Church in these times was quite a bold move.




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