Beauty

Columns

Dermatologist Cynthia Bailey begins a quarterly column with Hydrate Skin to Soothe Winter Itch: If you give the skin a little extra attention in the winter and employ some simple tips, it will be as soft and hydrated as it is during the warmer and more humid weather of summer

New Link

Sirona Springs Soaps - Named for the ancient Celtic goddess of healing, Sirona Springs features handmade products using their own formulations with highest quality butters and oils, colorants, and perfume-grade fragrances free of chemical preservatives and dyes. Many soaps and body butters are phthalate-free: phthalates are a large class of chemicals used in many products, from plastics to nail polish to fragrance oils. Morning Mojito soap contains essential oils of lime, spearmint and litsea cubeba, parsley; Blue Velvet contains a blend of fresh lemon and rosemary grounded by florals, sandalwood, musk and vetiver; Chocolate Espresso contains cocoa powder.

Jewelry from Historic New England

The Historic New England Museum, which has the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation, is presenting a Jewelry exhibit, that includes the themes of Marriage and Sentiment documenting "the customs and ceremonies of courtship and marriage in America over the past three hundred years." Female Adornment included those items that "were simply used to adorn and beautify the body." ... "Common materials included cut steel beads, pastes, seed pearls, topazes and garnets. Some pieces made of silver, gold and miniature portraits, were created in America, but most jewelry at this time was imported from Europe."

Male Adornment included " various button and buckle types, watches, rings and fobs set with seals to impress coat of arms, initials or other marks into wax. Practicality, however, did not mean that men’s jewelry lacked in embellishment. Eighteenth century men’s shoe buckles were frequently more elaborate than women’s, pocket watches were ornately decorated and utilized the highest quality materials like gold and silver, and stickpins were often set with precious stones."

Travel, Souvenirs and Foreign Jewelry included "revitalized ancient art forms such as micromosaic and cameo carving, and increased demand for materials such as shells, coral, and hard stones. Souvenir jewelry from Italy became so popular that it was imported and sold by European and American retailers and even imitated by domestic jewelry makers."

"The collection is diverse in forms and materials and represents the variety of jewelry fashions that were popular with New Englanders over the past three centuries. It also reflects the rich history of jewelry making in New England beginning with individual goldsmiths in the 18th century and ending with the large costume jewelry companies of the 20th century."

"Complementing the jewelry collection are many objects, portraits, photographs and ephemera from Historic New England’s fine and decorative art collection and library and archives. These related items help to give a deeper and better understanding of the history of jewelry in New England. This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Tiffany & Co. Foundation."

Skin Deep

The Environmental Working Group has created a website, Skin Deep, that identifies with 8,281 ingredients in more than 40,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases. If you're looking for a product report that we don't have in Skin Deep you may sign up to enter it into the database. According to Consumer Reports, only 11 percent of ingredients found in personal-care products, organic or not, have ever been screened for safety.

The scoring for the products goes from 0 -10: 0-2 is considered a low hazardous product, 3 - 6 a medium and 7 -10 a high hazard. Frankly, products that we would have thought would have only a low hazard, did produce a number in the medium range.

We checked commonly used products such as soaps, lotions, hair dyes, sunscreens, conditioners and toothpastes used by both men and women. In some cases we were appalled by the high hazard number and probably will never use a product again without checking before we purchased or used it.

Sonya Clark: Loose Strands, Tight Knots

An exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft is entitled: Manuf®actured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects:

"Tools used to groom, primp, preen, and adorn the body provide a wealth of information about cultural notions of beauty and aesthetics, hygiene and civilized behavior. This exhibition will feature approximately 20 works of sculpture, beadwork, photography, and video art by contemporary artist Sonya Clark in tandem with selected objects from the collection of the Walters Art Museum. All will express in their creative process and/or material composition a relationship with shifting — often highly subjective — notions of beauty. Expressing her concern for the function of art and objects in material culture, Clark creates works that engage the organic life of the object, as well as her concerns for its heritage and legacy. Born in Washington, DC, Sonya Clark was a longtime Baltimore resident. She is currently Chair of Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond."

The Museum of Contemporary Craft displays work by Livia Marin that explores "whether lipsticks could function as a sculptural work that emphasized individuality over uniformity. They came in a cohesive color palette designed specifically to attract attention. They could be molded like ceramic, plastic or glass into whatever form she chose. The tubes could function as pedestals when the pieces were on display, and double as protective containers for storage and shipping."

Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, as part of that same exhibit has used hair as decorative, elaborate sculptures: "Since the dawn of human culture, hair has been a medium for self-expression and identity. Hair is the original fashion accessory, possessed (at one time or another) by nearly every person. It has been braided, plaited, twisted, wrapped, piled, coiled, looped, teased, curled, straightened, twirled, sculpted, shaved, snipped, bound and woven – manipulated in every way imaginable. Using human, horse and artificial hair (typically the medium of the hairstylist and costume designer), artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir pushes the material well beyond its decorative and theatrical applications to explore its strange and magical possibilities."

Sonja Clark follows in the logical extension of the hair decorations: "Clark’s personal connection to the comb began like that of nearly every young girl, squirming on a chair while an adult armed with a comb and good intentions attempted to bring order to the disorder on her head. In the pieces chosen for Manuf®actured – Stacked, 7-Layer Tangle, and her Untitled wall piece – she has confronted the fine toothed combs of her childhood and made them her raw material, embracing what had once been an adversarial relationship. Employing hundreds of mass-produced black fine toothed combs, Clark explored the myriad ways in which combs could fit together to create a wide variety of sculptural forms."

Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry

The Walters Museum in Baltimore presents 200 pieces from the most wide-ranging private collection of jewelry in the United States " spanning the period from 3000 B.C. to the early 20th century, from simple Mesopotamian stone pendants to masterpieces created by Tiffany and Co.

This short video with Curator Sabine Albersmeier highlights some of the exquisite pieces of jewelry included in the exhibition. There's a page comprise of ten images to be viewed at the site.

Historical Background of Perfume & Perfume Manufacturing in Iran

The following excerpt is from the website, Pars Times

Iranians are regarded as the first manufacturers of perfume and discoverers of decorative and cosmetic powders and sweet smelling oils or beauty creams.

Plants and flowers, perfumes and aromas always attracted the attention of Iranian since the most remote times. In ancient sources, including the stone inscriptions of Achaemenian periods, as well as the Greek and Roman sources and Pahlavi texts, clear indications can be found about the Iranian's attention to, and interest in, various kinds of perfumes, incenses and sweet aromas.

In stone images of Persepolis Darius is shown while sitting on a nice chair with two scent bottles or incense bones in front of him, and Xerxes is standing behind him while holding the same kind of flowers in the left hand. These flowers are probably Lily of the Valley or narcissus which were peculiar to the Fars province, and which were mentioned in Islamic sources.

In another image the Iranian monarch is shown holding a beautiful flower in his left hand (and a protruded umbrella is kept over his head).

In another image an Iranian lady is holding a sweet smelling blower or apple in front of her face or nose. Without any doubt, these flowers had beautiful colors and aroma which attracted the attention of Iranian men and women. In addition to that, there is a wealth of sources and documentary evidence in support of Iranians' deep attachment to various kinds of plants, sweet smelling flowers, preparation of perfumes, fragrant materials and a variety of incenses. According to Will Durant and some western sources, Iranians were the first manufacturers of various kinds of perfumes, discoverers of decorative and cosmetic powders. Invention of sweet smelling essences or cosmetic creams is also attributed to Iranians.

The entire article, Historical Background of Perfume & Perfume Manufacturing in Iran, can be viewed at the Pars Times site.

Dental hygiene and mouthwash products

This website by Jennifer A. Heise references information from a variety of medieval and Renaissance sources and includes the following recipes:

Water Rinse, Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century
Wine rinse and herb chewing, Trotula, 11th century
Mint mouthwash, Banckes Herbal, 16th century
Wine washes and tooth rubbing, Gilbertus Anglicus, 15th century
Rosemary Charcoal Rub, Banckes Herbal, 16th century
Sage Tooth Scrub, Gervase Markham, early 17th century
Breath freshening powder, Gilbertus Anglicus, 15th century
Spice balls, Gilbertus Anglicus, 15th century
Women's Breath treatment, Trotula, 11th century
Tooth Whitening Wash, Gervase Markham, early 17th century
Comfits, Rumpolt/Plat, 16th century

Jennifer Heise makes notes that:

To emphasize that many medieval health care prescriptions are not harmful, the selection has been limited to largely non-toxic products. Also, only one mild abrasive has been included, and only one caustic, the alum combination, is included.

The dentifrices and mouthwashes come from all over Europe and from a variety of periods. Dental care prescriptions seem to center around rinsing the mouth, often with an acidic substance (wine or vinegar), though sometimes with a caustic. Teeth were rubbed with a cloth, and/or with mixtures of herbs and/or abrasives. Toothsticks, toothpicks, and rubbers of various kinds are documented in books and archeological sites. Some products, such as the bay leaf/musk combination and the pills of spices, provide a good smell; though spices also were used to heal infection.
The common and repeated ingredients include wine, salt and mint; alum and abrasive materials are included frequently in other recipes. I would say that for SCA use, the sage/salt tooth powder and the mint-vinegar rinse, along with rinsing with clear cold water, would be the best and easiest to use.

Link

International Perfume Museum - The museum is located in three sites which symbolize Grasse's history: the entry pavilion of the former Hugues-Aîné perfumery built in the 19th century, as well as the vestiges of the Dominicans' convent, built in the 14th century, backing the city walls dating from the end of the 16th century.

Some of the sections of the site include perfume creation and an extensive history covering antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance as well as 18th, 19th and 20th centuries:

"The development of aromacologie and perfumes exalting positives, soothing, invigorating, and bracing mind and body while maintaining the power of seduction. Some examples are Green Tea by Elisabeth Arden, Aromatic Tonic by Lancôme, Energizing Fragrance by Shisheido ...

"Today more than ever, perfume is a luxury item subject to economic concerns. However, its magical power remains intact: it beckons the imagination, invites escape reverie. From one shore to another, it has adapted itself throughout the 20th century to the cultures, traditions, and olfactory sensibilities of every continent, all the while transmitting its typically French heritage, and its undisputed savoir-faire the world over.

"Odoriferous molecules are breathed in and dissolve on the mucus-lined walls of the nose. Sensory cells located in the nasal cavities pick up from there and transmit the information to the brain's olfactory bulbs by way of the sensory nerves. The whole process takes place in one/thousandth of a second."

Excerpt

"In Europe, Diaghilev's London ballet production of Shéhérazade in 1909 sent sales of mascara and eye shadow rocketing upward. The Russian dancers' dramatic eye makeup stepped up the demand for kohl — at least for the privileged classes — and also started the fad of colored and gilded eye shadows that color-coordinated with daring evening dresses designed by the likes of Paul Poiret, an eccentric French dressmaker who, according to beauty entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein in her autobiography, used to receive his guests with 'live panthers chained in the entrance hall, each one attended by a six-foot Negro stripped to the waist, a bejeweled turban wound around his head, and his bare torso oiled and gleaming to resemble statuary.' "

"Dancers had a big influence on American doyennes of beauty like Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. Both women recall in their memoirs having been struck by the eye makeup used by the Russian ballerinas and other dancers. Arden and Rubinstein persuaded their wealthy clientele to play with these bold eye cosmetics. "I experimented privately and learned many valuable lessons from stage personalities, which in turn I taught to a few of my more daring clients," Rubinstein wrote in her autobiography. "They spread the word, and I knew that another beauty barrier would soon be toppled." By the end of World War I, "mascaro," the hair dye, had evolved into "mascara," a cosmetic used specifically and routinely by many women — at least in the big metropolises."

From an excerpt from Inventing Beauty by Teresa Riordan, published by Random House

Ancient Rome, Older Women & Hair

Part of the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts' site is a feature called Object in Focus, a teacher's resource. A recent selection is entitled, Portrait of an Older Woman, Roman, 60–70 A.D., done in marble. She's described thusly:

Let your eyes wander over this sculpture. Folds of fabric cross the woman’s chest, drop off her shoulder, swing across her belly, fall to her ankles — only to swoop back up towards her head. But the action stops there. Curls of hair cling tightly to her scalp in orderly rows. They frame a stern face, with firm jaw and tight lips.

Cover her head with your hand. Beneath the folds of fabric we sense a body that is active, strong, and young. Her shoulders are almost dainty, and her breasts are firm. Now take your hand away. Does the head surprise you? Perhaps a bit large for the body, it bears the steady gaze of an older, more mature woman than the body suggests.

The contradiction between the head and body of this sculpture may seem odd at first. But the puzzle reveals important aspects of this woman's character and role in life.

Another exhibit devoted to ancient Roman women was I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome, organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and "the first attempt to study the lives of Roman women as revealed in Roman art."

The University of Texas press published I Claudia II, Women in Roman Art and Society edited by Diana Kleiner and Susan B. Matheson, a successor to the book that accompanied the exhibit noted above. The book contains a series of essays dealing with the subject and an excerpt from the introduction follows.

"In Roman antiquity, beauty was physical comeliness but, at the same time, was perceived as a feminine virtue. A woman with an exquisite hairstyle was at once attractive and also virtuous. Empresses and princesses worked with their hairstylists to create new coiffures because they wanted to be perceived as fashionable, on the cutting edge, and prosperous, but, at the same time, these hairstyles proclaimed that their wearer possessed all the traits desirable in the ideal Roman woman. In addition, these hairstyles were not chosen haphazardly. Instead, each corkscrew curl, each flowing tress, and each blunt cut bang was carefully arranged to make reference to the political or social agenda of the current dynast and his family. Octavia appears to have invented the new nodus coiffure, but it was Livia who transformed it into a cause célèbre, to be imitated by Roman girls and matrons throughout the empire. Livia's hairstyle was copied in large part because it was hers and she was empress of Rome. But it was also imitated because it literally had bound up with it all the desirable features of ideal Roman womanhood, enumerated in the Augustan marriage and moral legislation. By wearing the hairstyle, the woman took on, almost by magic, all of the trappings of the ideal Roman woman. An additional nuance was that this very coiffure had become associated in the minds of the Romans with the Roman state itself and with a nationalistic fervor. Livia wore the simple hairstyle as a statement that she, unlike Cleopatra, her husband's foe at Actium, was a woman of high moral character, a patrician from a noble Roman family, and not a foreign woman given to what was reported to be ostentatious excess. The simplicity of Livia's hairstyle was not only a striking contrast to the intricacy of Cleopatra's tresses but a reflection of the simple austerity of the Republican values being revived by Augustus in his program of moral reform. When aristocratic women, freedwomen, and even female slaves adopted Livia's hairstyle, they did so in imitation of the current trendsetters but also to indicate that they possessed the same virtues as their imperial counterparts and that they were Romans."

You can also read a commentary on the Roman woman's hairstyle at the Minneapolis site entitled Hairstyle is more than a fashion statement in Roman portraits.

Museums

The Barcelona Perfume Museum which began in 1963 traces the evolution of perfumes through a selection of some nine thousand pieces: perfume bottles, advertising documents and boxes.

One of the unusual items in the collection is a pair of perfume earrings consisting of two filigree silver pendent arcs. Small pigeons hang from the lower spheres and these earrings were considered to be effective against spells or maladies which could penetrate through the ears. Another type of container is a blown glass almorratxa with four spouts in a floral and fish decoration.

A history traces the contributions of various countries and civilizations to perfume lore. One custom "introduced by the women of the high society of Egypt, to put underneath the wigs that habitually they carry, called 'cones,' made of fat mixed with perfumes, which they were fused with the corporal heat and with the atmosphere, at the same time that they perfumed the body that took them." (As you might have gathered, the translation from the Spanish is a bit odd at times.)

The advent of commercial perfumes is outlined on the site with emphasis on the contributions of the European countries.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Blonde Hair

Aphrodite was the original model of the blonde beauty, her hair symbolic of her sexual attractions. She set the tone for blondes, providing the role model for Venus and for many subsequent blonde sex goddesses.

Eve and Mary Magdalene were the two bad girl blondes of the Middle Ages. Their blonde hair (as seen in paintings and other images of the medieval period) was singled out as a sign of dangerous sexual allure, evidence of their appetites for pleasure and their lascivious designs on innocent men. Preachers of the period tried to suppress the popularity of blonde hair, threatening hell fire and damnation on those who dyed their hair, and encouraging bonfires of blonde wigs.

In Renaissance Italy, blonde hair became the unquestioned symbol of feminine beauty, openly celebrated in the paintings and poems of the period. Courtesans and wealthy women used to dye their hair using dyes made from vine ashes, chopped liquorice, lime juice and even horse urine.

Only 0.001% of adults are naturally blonde.

By the 1970s, with L’Oreal’s “Because I’m Worth It” campaign, blonde hair had become a symbol of woman’s independence.

Victims of the famous Clairol 1960s ad campaign for a blonde rinse included Betty Friedan and David Hockney, who allegedly rushed out of his apartment in the middle of the night to buy a bottle after seeing the ad on TV.

True Blue, Madonna’s first album as a blonde, sold twenty million copies worldwide. Her previous albums, for which she’d been a brunette, sold five million.

Jean Harlow dyed her hair with a diabolical cocktail of peroxide, household bleach, soap flakes and ammonia until it fell out and she was forced to wear a wig.

Marilyn Monroe refused to allow other actresses with blonde hair on the same film set with her.

Princess Diana spent almost £4000 a year having her hair bleached.

From the book, On Blondes by Johanna Pitman, published by Bloomsbury. Allison Pearson's article in the London Telegraph reveals this about Pitman herself:

"Fifteen years ago, working in Africa, Pitman felt the primal charge of being blonde for herself. Exposed to the sun all day, her brownish hair turned bright gold. Mistaken for a saint, she was asked to heal a man with a snake bite. After a dash to hospital, the grateful patient shyly tried to touch his saviour's golden halo. A brunette in the same circumstances might have earned profuse thanks, but it is unlikely she would have commanded the 28 goats offered to the blonde. On Blondes shows how every age has restyled blonde hair in its own image, investing it with its particular dreams and anxieties. The subject has taken Joanna Pitman down some unlikely paths ... for purposes of research, Joanna Pitman herself went electric Andy Warhol white at colossal expense and is horrified to report that it was money well spent. She was served first in shops and people smiled at her for no reason at all. 'After a while I wondered whether I could afford not to be blonde.' "

Distance learning and perfumery

The older I become, the more I seem to need my favorite perfume, applied several times a day, in fact. It's a reassuring imprint of my taste and a comfort in itself.

If you'd like to start a new career, why not the art of perfumery? Versailles University in France offers a program entirely delivered in English. The first year, held in Versailles is essentially technical and scientific (perfumery, cosmetic and chemistry), with the second year being spent either to Plymouth (UK) or Padova (Italy) for business administration and marketing applied to the perfumery and cosmetic sector.

Hair

"I'm having a Bad Hair Day. Well, to be honest, I'm having a Bad Hair Week. I'm due for a haircut and my hair has reached that stage where charmingly tousled becomes downright unkempt. Fortunately, I am not without resources in this battle with my unruly locks. Science is on my side. About a year ago (about the same time I became a blonde), I started doing a little research into hair and makeup for a book that I planned to write. Along the way — through hair color changes and research — I realized that a little bit of understanding could reduce the number of Bad Hair Days I experience. Scientific knowledge and a few chemical concoctions will get me through the week and a half until I get my hair back into acceptable shape...

" In a week and a half, I'll take my unkempt mop of hair to my trustworthy hairdresser and do a little experimenting. I know that blondes have fun, but I've started wondering about redheads, and how much fun they have. I'm still in the research phase on this. I'll get back to you in a few years with definitive results. But I have decided that there's nothing like a little color to improve a Bad Hair situation."

Read Better Hair Through Chemistry by Pat Murphy at the Exploratorium Magazine

Fresh.com carries products that sound good enough to eat: Fleurs de Chocolat with three eau de parfum in the collection named after female opera heroines. Manon is a dreamy, soft fragrance, accented by pear, linden and fig, centered on freesia, wild rose and jasmine, balanced on bitter chocolate, rosewood and cloves. Mikado is an exotic fragrance balanced by bergamot, vanilla and mint leaf with Darjeeling tea, Moroccan pomegranate and amber, resting on vetiver, bitter chocolate and Tonka bean. Forget the face, get out the spoon.