I have always loved dressing up. As a tiny tot, I would ‘borrow’ my mum’s shoes and rifle through my gran’s handbag to find her compact and lipstick. Today this has become a love of clothes and make-up and a bit of a shopping problem with shoes.
Teaching to large university classes feels more like theatre than teaching. I always dress for the performance. I spend hours prepping my lecture material, but I also spend time thinking about clothes, hair and make-up. There is always a small group in the class who notice. This year they loved my pale blue combat boots.
COVID-19 and the lab work have cramped my style! There is little point in wearing a beautiful lipstick if you are masked all day. I’ve learned the hard way not to wear good clothes into the lab. The lack of opportunities to get dolled up in recent months probably explain why I jumped on the idea of trying 18th century make-up with enthusiasm! While I was interested in seeing what the make-up looked like, it was also an excuse to play dress-up.
I have tried four different historical make-up looks so far. I plan to try more. We are revamping the Wearing Make-up section of the website, so we can post more recipes and photographs. I plan to post renaissance make-up photographs on October 1st, and photographs of an early 19th century make-up on November 1st. We’ll add another look in December.
I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed trying them!
All new make-up looks will be posted under the menu tab ‘Wearing Make-up’' on the main Toxic Allure website.