Ancient World
Ritual & Divine Beauty
Kohl, malachite, red ochre and white lead: the earliest cosmetics were manufactured substances with ritual, medical and practical purposes, and the evidence for them is in the objects rather than the anecdotes.
Eras
Beauty through time — from the sacred pigments of the ancient world to the face we wear today.
6 eras3500 BCE — Today
- 3500 BCE – 500 CE
- 500 – 1500
Medieval
Faith & Adornment
Medieval beauty prized a pale complexion, a high plucked forehead and no visible artifice — an ideal pursued with a substantial body of cosmetic recipes that survives in the medical literature of Salerno and al-Andalus.
- 1400 – 1700
Renaissance
Art & Ideal Beauty
Between 1400 and 1700 beauty became a subject of written theory and technical recipe collections — and Venetian ceruse, the most admired complexion of the age, became its most documented hazard.
- 1837 – 1901
Victorian
Elegance & Etiquette
Victorian respectability held that a lady did not paint — so the cosmetics of the period were sold as medicine, as toilette preparations and as anything but makeup, and bought in enormous numbers.
- 1920 – 1929
1920s
Rebellion & Modernity
Dark lips, kohl-rimmed eyes and a powdered complexion: the 1920s assembled the face we still recognise as "wearing makeup", and made wearing it in public an ordinary act.
- 1930 – Today
Modern
Self-Expression
From Technicolor foundation to the shade ranges of the 2010s: the modern era industrialised beauty, sold it as fashion, and spent decades arguing about who it was for.