Medieval Beauty

Medieval beauty

(In which I discover the aesthetic conventions of the middle ages and attempt to try them myself, using my own makeup.)

My knowledge of medieval fashion and beauty is based largely on pop culture (when I typed ‘medieval hair’ into Google images, there was a lot of Cersei Lannister), so this probably won’t be totally accurate but I’ll do my best.

Before I start, I should say that I am at two significant disadvantages with this task:

1)      The people of the medieval age favoured blonde hair, which I don’t have.

2)      They also preferred clear skin, and I have a lot of freckles and moles on my face. They would probably have thought I was a witch.

Apparently scrubbing your face with an amethyst got rid of blemishes, but they don’t sell those in Boots, so I just used cream concealer. I then attempted to cover up my freckles with concealer stick; I didn’t quite succeed, but they are less noticeable. I also used lemon juice to make my lips pinker, which is supposedly authentic. Also painful.

Hair-wise, I made three braids on either side of my head, then pinned them in a loop together at the back. While my hair is quite long by modern standards, it isn’t as long as would have been usual in the middle ages, so I couldn’t do as intricate a pattern as I would have liked. I then did four more braids in the lower part of my hair, just for added decoration. I didn’t straighten my hair before styling it because it wouldn’t have been an option at the time, although according to Alex, I have ‘English’ hair anyway, which basically means it’s wavy and kind of fluffy.

This is my face sans makeup and my natural hair:

And this is the finished product:

I hope you enjoyed my (slightly haphazard) attempt at medieval beauty!

Information from:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/55276/17-signs-youd-qualify-witch-1692

http://www.xovain.com/how-to/medieval-beauty-tips