![]() As lowbrow street fashion and courtly costumes began to overlap, so-called “beauty patches” were simultaneously praised and derided, a sign of the turbulent times. While utilitarian face patches date back thousands of years, their aesthetic application only took off in the late 1500s. “She had this one imperfection that made her even more beautiful.” During the late Renaissance, these conspicuous spots spread among the stylish set and tantalized onlookers, to whom they seemed like a secret language: Were hers placed in symbolic locations? Did his cover signs of illness or injury? Were messages encoded in the spots’ distinctive shapes? In England, artificial beauty marks were known as “ plaisters” or patches, since they often covered scars and pockmarks, thereby transforming a blemish into a feature. ![]() ![]() The French called them mouches or “flies,” because of the dark spots’ resemblance to small insects alighted on fashionably pale skin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |