Historic Influence
Left and Right: Valentino Spring 2013 Couture, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Center: Evening dress from the House of Worth, 1898-1900. In the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
MythBusters: Fashion History Edition
Myth: Fashionable eighteenth-century ladies shaved off their eyebrows and used false eyebrows made of mouse fur. Grace Dalrymple Elliot by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1778. Private Collection. Are those eyebrows made of mice? This is a common myth about eighteenth-century beauty that I have read in many books, some reliable sources of fashion history information and some not. But, when doing historical research, it's always best to go back to the primary sources. Primary sources are sources of information produced in the actual time period, such as a letter, newspaper article, or painting. As this excellent article from The British Library shows, the primary source evidence for mouse-skin eyebrows is thin. The following are all the sources which mention mouse-skin eyebrows, arranged in chronological order. A section from The Tender Husband , a comedic play by Richard Steele, 1707: Mrs. Clerimont: The Ladies abroad used to call me Mrs. Titian, I was so famous for my colouring; but prit...
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