Compact mirror

A compact mirror is a pocket mirror in a case: two hinged halves, or a single glass in a sleeve or a swivel, small enough for a bag and flat enough for a pocket. Most now carry two mirrors, one plain for the whole face and one magnified for liner, brows and the edge of a lip. Some add a ring of LED light, run from coin batteries or recharged by cable, so that a face can be checked in a dim restaurant or on a train.

It is a different object from the powder compact, whose mirror comes with a cake of powder and a puff and is rarely bigger than the powder beneath it. The compact mirror carries no makeup of its own. That leaves room for a larger glass, a second magnification or a light, and it is why a separate mirror is worth carrying even by someone whose powder already has one.

Magnification. A plain, 1x mirror shows the face as others see it, and it is the one to judge base and blush by. Between 2x and 5x is enough for liner, mascara and the edge of a lip. A 10x or 15x mirror shows a single lash line or brow in detail, but only a small patch of skin at a time, and has to be held close. Two faces, one plain and one magnified, cover most needs.

Light. A lit compact solves the dim-room problem, but its light is not daylight, so judge colour by the light you will be seen in. Rechargeable ones save batteries; coin-cell ones are lighter. Case. Metal and enamel feel solid and scratch less than plastic; leather cases are quieter in a bag and kinder to the glass. A clasp, hinge or tab that holds the case shut matters more than it looks, since the mirror that cracks is the one that falls open. Size. A glass about 7 cm across shows the mouth and an eye at once; the larger lit compacts belong in a makeup bag rather than a pocket.

Look into the plain side at arm’s length before touching anything. Most touch-ups go wrong because the magnified side shows a flaw nobody else can see, and a face corrected at 10x can look worked over at a table’s distance. Keep the magnifying side for the detail it is made for, tightening a liner, placing a lash, tidying the edge of a lipstick, then check the result in the plain side again before closing the case.

Turn towards the best light in the room rather than away from it: a window beats any built-in LED. On a lit compact, choose the most neutral setting when checking colour. And bring the mirror to the face rather than craning towards it, so the angle stays true and the neck does not throw a shadow.

Wipe the glass with a soft, dry cloth, as Victoria Beckham Beauty advises for its compact; a tissue drags grit across it. Keep powder and lipstick off the hinge, where they build up until it no longer closes. Carry the mirror in its pouch or an inner pocket, away from keys and coins, and take the batteries out of a lit compact that will sit unused for months. Replace a cracked mirror rather than taping it: split glass can shed a splinter at the edge.

The pocket mirror is older than the compact, and for most of its history it was a luxury. Of the secular ivories carved in medieval Paris, more mirror cases survive than any other kind: thin discs carved with lovers and romances, the back made to hold a polished metal disc as the mirror.^[1] Two discs closed together, usually 8 to 14 cm across, and most, the Victoria and Albert Museum reckons, were bought as expensive gifts, often as wedding presents.^[2] Comb makers sold them with combs and hair parters in leather cases, and the Duke of Burgundy’s accounts for 1367 record a Paris comb maker supplying a case of combs with an ivory mirror for the duke’s barber.^[1] A Japanese purse of silk brocade from the Edo period, also in the V&A, encloses a cast bronze mirror silvered on its face.^[3]

By the early twentieth century a pocket mirror could be given away. The V&A holds two made in England for the Co-operative Wholesale Society as biscuit advertising, printed tin around a disc of glass under 5 cm across: one of about 1910, and one of about 1924 with a biscuit on its back.^[4][5] A French opera bag of about 1910 kept a leather-backed mirror beside its opera glasses, fan and powder puff.^[6] Then the powder compact took the mirror into its lid, and a patent of 1925 mounted it so that it could be opened without opening the powder at all.^[7]

The mirror never needed the powder. A pocket mirror sold at T. Rex concerts in the summer of 1973, printed with Marc Bolan’s face, was, the museum suggests, for putting on glitter make-up before the show.^[8] Today’s compact mirror is the same object with a second glass and often a light: the ivory case’s job, done in brass, leather or plastic.