Why Was Makeup Frowned Upon In Victorian Britain? | Our History

I began my study of British beauty with the powdered and painted Georgians. Now I'm turning to the Victorians and things have clearly changed a lot. The beauty look in the 1860s is a million miles away from this. There's something incredibly understated about Victorian beauties. Their clothes may be big and silky but their faces don't match. Not surprisingly the inspiration for this look is partly from Queen Victoria herself and if you look at this photograph of her she looks quite plain in fact. She could almost be a mill worker surrounded by her family. She's being depicted as the perfect mother. Even in her official portrait of 1859 her clothes are grand but her face appears unpainted. Although she obviously has been zhuzhed up a bit you can also see that her nose is quite red and shiny and this really tells us that she doesn't wear makeup. Even her gaze, very very direct gaze. It's regal but at the same time her skin is telling us that she's for real. But did Victorian women really abandon their makeup or was this a bare-faced lie? Hi Queenie, how are you? Have a seat darling. When I'm asked to present a model looking fresh-faced for a modern shoot I know I'm in for a lot of work. All makeup is about illusion but the natural look is the ultimate magic trick. Concealing its own existence. For the base of a modern look I'll begin with concealer then foundation before applying highlighter and that's just the start. This natural look that I've just done on Queenie has probably taken 45 minutes and I've probably used about 30 products. I want to create a genuine Victorian makeover on Queenie. I wonder if I'm in for a similar amount of work. What I notice immediately is the Victorian beauty look is a very middle-class domestic look. In these pictures women almost blend into the soft furnishings. It's all about women sewing, women looking after children. It's all about respectability. In the 19th century it was no longer the aristocracy who were the leaders of fashion but the growing middle class. Even Queen Victoria styled herself on them. To understand what this new look was all about I'm off to a middle-class drawing room to meet historian and author Professor Catherine Hughes. So Catherine, what were Victorian women reading and hearing about beauty? They were being told, often by men I have to say, that makeup is an absolute no-no. The idea is that the man comes home after a busy day at the bank, at the office, to a lovely looking woman who is beautiful apparently without any artificial aid at all. There was an extremely popular poem in the mid-19th century by a man called Coventry Patmore called The Angel in the House. The clue's in the title. He's really describing his ideal woman. She's at home the whole time. She never loses her rag. She never shouts at the kids. She's never snappy with the servants. Angels, as we know, don't usually wear makeup. So it's that very particular kind of absolute as God made you. So makeup was absolutely out. Well, officially it was out. But the extraordinary thing was there was still an awful lot of information available about it. Well, what you get from about 1850 onwards is a real outpouring of magazines aimed at middle class and lower class women. So for the first time, women have their own reading matter. These magazines covered all sorts of things. They're quite familiar to us. I mean, there are these beautiful fashions. I mean, look at the colours. In their original form, these monthly magazines would have lots and lots of advertisements at the front and at the back. And you'll find, interestingly, that they're all about makeup. Why don't you send us a few postage stamps and we'll send you back something that is probably rouge? So it's a kind of secret trade in makeup. Wow, it's so interesting. So really, unless you were kind of sending off for all of this makeup and skin preparations, you couldn't compete with the so-called natural beauties, because everyone was indulging in this covert makeup, really. Absolutely. The stakes were really high, because there's a sort of subtext which says, you know, if you're not pretty enough, you won't get a husband. So in a sense, making the best of yourself, which means putting a lot of artifice into looking as natural as possible, is actually a really important economic task that you've got to do. When I think of the Victorian era, it brings to mind the Industrial Revolution, brilliant engineering, exploration and world trade. But what's clear from Catherine is that for middle-class women, their world wasn't expanding at all. It was getting smaller. I think what I'm finding most fascinating here is just how much of a no-win situation women were in. On one hand, you're supposed to be naturally gorgeous, because this is a sign of your inner virtue shining through. But you're also being told that you cannot use makeup. What's a girl to do? I've been looking through books and magazines of the time to find popular cosmetic recipes and formulas, and I'm ready to start preparing my model's Victorian look. Queenie, I love your hair, your Victorian hairdo, especially these plaits at the back. So intricate and pretty, do you like it? I'd much prefer it to the Georgian look, yeah. What about the front here? Would you ever do this very simple curtain look? No, because it makes me look a bit like a potato. It's funny you should mention potatoes. I've got some potato starch powder for you in a minute, so I think we're on a bit of a theme here. It's telling that with all this emphasis on being natural, the Victorian beauty regime became all about skincare, and I'm beginning with something really wholesome. I'm going to start by cleansing your eyes, and for that I'm going to use something which Queen Victoria herself used, and this is chamomile water. Really pretty. Really pretty, so these are chamomile flowers and infused in boiling water. It's quite therapeutic. Does it feel nice? Yeah. And she also used elderflower water, so made in a similar way to wash her hands and face, so it was all very floral and natural and pure. But it wasn't all flowers and potatoes. The search for the natural look took the Victorians to some very strange places, from enamelling the face to arsenic on the hairline. There's a lot here that doesn't sound natural at all, but I want to start with something more simple. I've been working with pharmacist Sue Zhen Wong in her cutting-edge lab at Keele University. The Victorians, with their obsession with scientific progress, would definitely approve of these surroundings. We're making a beauty staple, cold cream. It's an emulsion of water and fats and is an all-purpose moisturiser. Versions of it have been around since the ancient Greeks, but the Victorians updated it with some new ingredients, and it was a central part of their beauty regime and the next product I need for Queenie's look. I'm just melting down the white wax and I've added in the sea oils. And what I'm going to do now is to actually put our molten mixture into the pesa mortar and then I'm going to add the rose water in. It's so nice to see things made this way. The old-fashioned way. Yeah, the old-fashioned way. It will slowly set into a cream, so you can actually see now when it's still a little bit warm, it's a very nice lotion at the moment. It's lovely, it looks very moisturising. Indeed. Would you like to try some? I would like to. Pop a bit on my hand. All right, just a drop. There we are. Thank you. Oh, it's lovely. I can imagine that although some of it is going to go into the skin, there's going to be a real sheen left on the surface. Yes, indeed. Which would play in really nicely to that youthful aura, glow, that the Victorian ladies love so much. Yes. This would have been a really lovely, daily ritual for women to sit at their dressing tables and massage their faces. The cream not only moisturised the skin, but it was also a really good base for anything else that you'd put on, so you'd be able to get a nice seamless blended finish, which would make it look much more natural. So it was actually a great base for secret makeup. So far, the Victorians are seeming pretty normal, aren't they? But being a middle-class Victorian woman wasn't exactly a trip to the spa. There was a lingering admiration for the delicate stay-at-home girl. One of the weirdest trends of the Victorian era was the idea that if you contracted consumption, otherwise known as tuberculosis, which is a horrible disease, that it would somehow make you more beautiful. And there's a line here in a beauty manual of the time saying, the fairest skins belong to the people in the earliest stage of consumption. And certainly, you can imagine why they thought this, because being ill would give you that very white skin. It would give you that flushed cheek. The fever would give you almost like a dewy look to your skin. If you look at this plate here, and you see that there's a young woman who's obviously dying of consumption, and there's her mother grieving. They've portrayed her with a really pretty flush on the lip, on the cheek, almost this sort of pink eyeshadow. And she looks absolutely beautiful. And although it seems really shocking now to imagine that this was ever a thing, if you just think back in recent history, say to the 90s, when it was all about heroin chic, is it really that different? It just goes to show you how cyclical fashion is. But the fact is that in both the 1990s and the 1890s, not everyone could summon up a fevered flush or bitten lip without artificial assistance. So for the next stage of Queenie's look, I'm going to venture into the secret world of Victorian coloured makeup. And of course, it's masquerading as something else. So taking a look through the Victorian pharmacist recipe books is so interesting. There's lots of lip salves which sound so innocent. We've got French lip salve, German lip salve, Italian lip salve. It all sounds very exotic. But I think I'm going to make this lip salve, which is the grape one. So it's obviously going to have quite a bit of colour, but it is called a salve again. So it's supposed to be natural. But let's have a look. I'm going to start with some red grapes. So that's our alkanet root, beeswax and butter. The fact that they put butter in would mean it would go off very, very quickly. That alkanet is an interesting touch. It's a herb used as a dye. The grapes may be what's advertised, but they're not the ingredient doing the work. All right, I'm going to take it off the stove. I think it's done. And I'm just going to have a look at this colour. That is magnificent. That's what I would call a human colour. It's almost like the colour of blood. So when it's on the skin and blended, it will look completely natural and almost as if you're blushing from within. In fact, there are lots of recipes in the pharmacist books that sound perfectly innocent and natural, but they are not what they seem. Whenever I have a new product, I always love to try it on myself first. For a Victorian lady, cosmetics, particularly colour cosmetics, were a risky business. If you were caught wearing or even buying makeup, your reputation could be in tatters. So stealth tactics needed to be employed. Sneaky makeup. It's all about sneaky makeup. I'm going to try the Grape Lip Solve. I've got high hopes for this one. I think this is going to be very modern. I have to use a spatula. It's really hard. Okay, let's have a look. Oh, I'm going to have to blend this out. Ah, so interesting. Not too shiny. That'll be the butter. So rather than giving you a glossy look, it just looks like a well moisturised lip. So that's very acceptable. And the colour is really subtle. Like you'd never know that I was wearing lipstick. Really soft and diffused. And you could build up. So during the day, that would absolutely be more than enough. And in the evening, you could probably add a sneaky little bit extra. As long as no one, maybe not your mother to find out about that. It's a bit like when you're at school and you first start wearing makeup and you're wearing something which is really subtle so your mother can't see. Finally, I'm going to try Red Crepe Paper. This is the ultimate tool in the sneaky makeup kit. Any woman could go into their local stationers and buy this. No one would bat an eyelid. Get home, cut a small square, dampen it with a sponge and rub onto the lips. Just a hint of pink. You could even use that layered underneath your tinted lip balm so that the effect would be more moisturising and more natural looking. And then off I go to church. Although I wouldn't be able to go with these eyes. No way. But why was makeup so dangerous for nice girls? Apart from the question of deception, it's got to have something to do with the sort of women who did wear makeup. Actresses definitely had to wear it on stage. And even in these black and white photos, you can spot the obvious signs of lipstick and some very well-defined eyes and brows. But in the mid-19th century, actresses weren't fashion influencers. Instead, they were regarded as almost interchangeable with prostitutes. I'm off to meet Kate Lister, historian of sex. And hopefully she can shed some light on the Victorian painted ladies. The Victorians seemed to be particularly fascinated with prostitution. They can't stop talking about it. Lots of moralisers wrote about it. All these studies were done about it. And then what are we going to do? What are we going to do? They were absolutely obsessed with it. There seems to be a really strong connection between makeup, sex and morality. And was there also a sense that somebody that was wearing a lot of makeup may be wearing it to conceal disease? Yes, and syphilis, for example, was absolutely rife. The sores, the rash as well that syphilis would cause, you could try and cover that with makeup. A huge area of concern for the British government was that syphilis was absolutely rife in the military. And they introduced, with very little debate around it actually, the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864 was the first one. And it was in a few garrison towns around the UK. And this legislation meant that any woman suspected of being a sex worker could be forcibly detained. And she would be made to submit to a genital examination to find out whether or not she was suffering from a venereal disease. If she refused that examination, she could be jailed for up to a year. So this must have led to women in general being very anxious about how they looked, how much hair and makeup they wore, or how they dressed for fear of being picked up by the police and dragged in for examination. Absolutely. There are reports that women are scared to go out by themselves, that they won't go out unaccompanied in the places where these acts are, because they can't, if anybody, if anyone in the police force or in authority suspects somebody of selling sex, that's enough to have them forcibly detained and subjected to a venereal exam. There's such a strong sense and a thread running throughout all of this. What is it about painting your face that makes you the target of this kind of disgust, really? I think that it is about sex, but it's also about being seen and being visible. A heavy, made-up look makes you stand out. It's not demure and it's not discreet and it's someone announcing to the world, I am here. Absolutely. I think strong women have always understood the power of makeup. Absolutely, especially a red lip. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For most Victorian women, standing out wasn't an option. The consequences were far too horrific. So they had to apply their makeup covertly. So on to the main challenge of Victorian makeup, how to make blush not look like blush. I'm using Almond Bloom, a liquid rouge first sold by Pears. It's made using various natural red dyes mixed in water and then fixed with something called Isinglass, a fish-based gelatin. I'm going to start with one drop. Because this is dangerous. According to one writer of the time, a violently rouged woman is one of the most disgusting objects to the eye. Oh, this is a dream. I think all Victorian women must have been wearing this because you cannot tell that's makeup. You'd be crazy not to. A further reason why makeup had to be so subtle was connected to another Victorian obsession, cleanliness. An obviously made-up face was not a clean face. Soap and other cleansing products were big business. By the mid-19th century, scientists were working out that poor hygiene caused diseases. The Victorians built sewers and public bathhouses so that everyone could bathe. It's very foamy. It feels like, yes, this is doing the job. The idea was that people would be cleaner, both literally and morally. Ah, hear that? Squeaky clean. Cleaning was part of a beauty routine which all classes could engage with. Industrialisation meant factories were mass-producing soap for just a few pennies each. I've come to John Gosnawson Co., one of the Victorian era's biggest soap producers, and still operating today. They bill themselves as the oldest cosmetics manufacturer in the UK, and their story shows how the Victorian obsession with soap could be used to build a beauty empire. Current director, Chris Warner, explains how profitable cleanliness of all kinds could be. Our biggest seller was probably the toothpaste. We had a fan in Queen Victoria, which was... See the ads for it here. Yeah, and so the lady on the top of the tin is Victoria. So we did, I think, milk that connection for as long as we could. It's interesting it's cherry, though, because now we always think of mint, spearmint or peppermint, when you think of toothpaste. I think it was to do with the colour, so I don't think it particularly had a cherry flavour. So I have one here that we made earlier, as they say, and we don't know what was in the original Gosnell's recipe, so this is just from a journal at the time. Well, I smell the cuttlefish, that's for sure, and the cloves. It also contained glycerin, almond oil, chalk and red dye. For Victorians, shiny white teeth were another sign of purity, but I'm a bit sceptical if this will have the desired effect. It's so bright, it looks like it's going to stain your teeth, bright red. I think the colour will be cochineal, so it's beetles. I love the way here, this is the illustrated news of the world. So we've got the ad for Gosnell's famous cherry toothpaste, and it's six pence a jar, and then right underneath, teeth, one pound a cent. Pay your money, take your choice, you can have toothpaste or the false teeth. Shall we try this? Must we? I think we should just at least see it on a brush, because we need to experience why this was such a big seller, what was so unique about it. Get your water. OK, that's yours. Thank you very much. It says just take a few specks of it. Oh, it's very red. Ready? Gross. No, I didn't have enough. Gross, gross, gross. I don't think I was committed quite hard. No, you were. OK, here we go. I'm doing all my teeth now, don't worry, honey. I'm going to rinse out. You certainly know you've done it. I do want to see my teeth, though, I want to check they're not red. No, that's all right. There we go. Tongue? Tongue's got a bit of colour to it. A rosiness. Maybe that was a nice look. Yes. Look like I've got gum disease and my gum is quite red. No, it's OK. Maybe it works. Maybe there's something here. Cherry Toothpaste was obviously the real hero product. And like brands today, once you've got your hero out that everyone knows about, you can then start to market a lot more products. Yes, build from it. Gosnell's went on to sell perfumes, face creams and powders. For a culture that sold beauty as all about the natural look, there were an awful lot of people making money out of selling cosmetics. There were also some salons where makeup treatments were on offer, including one in Bond Street, owned by a notorious Victorian beautician, Madam Rachel. And she certainly captured the public's imagination. Firstly, she was selling full-on cosmetics. So none of this soaps, fragrances. She was selling rouge, lipstick. And this was all sold with some pretty aggressive marketing. Listen to one of her adverts. How frequently we find that a slight blemish on the face, otherwise divinely beautiful, has occasioned a sad and solitary life of celibacy, unloved, unblessed and ultimately unwept and unremembered. I mean, she's really playing to women's insecurities here and she's getting away with it. Scores of articles appeared about Madam Rachel in the Times and she was eventually imprisoned for fraud. Once again, the use of cosmetics was being linked with crime, gossip and a lack of respectability. One of the services that Madam Rachel offered was something called enamelling. And just when you thought the Victorians couldn't get any weirder, this was a counter-trend completely opposite to the popular natural look. It wasn't anything like nail enamel. It was quite a heavy makeup look, a little bit like an Instagram filter. It was supposed to give you this flawless look that would almost fill in all of your wrinkles and take years off. It was a very expensive treatment to have, the equivalent of thousands of pounds in today's money. And it was hush-hush. Like cosmetic surgery today, you wouldn't want to advertise that you'd had it done. Because of this, visual evidence of it is hard to find. But in the 1880s, a Parisian socialite became the poster girl for the enamelled look. She was called Virginie Goutreau and was immortalised by artists John Singer Sargent and Gustave Coutoir. I've come across a recipe in a practical guide for the perfumer for something called pearl white, which I'm hoping will produce the enamelled look. I've asked Sue to help. So this is Virginie Goutreau, and she was also known as Madame X. And you can see she's almost like a pearl. It's extraordinary. Here on this one, you can see as well a lot of the texture of her skin, her real skin showing through. Round her eyes and her ears obviously aren't painted, so you get this sense of her really being a painted lady. I would love to see how this recipe looks in real life. Sue's recreating a face enamel from the 1860s, starting with the metal bismuth. The bismuth powder is then added to concentrated nitric acid. And a layer of white pigment is formed when it's added to water. Bismuth whites were known as pearl white. Because they're slightly pearlescent. And this is the resultant pigment that we actually harvest out. Wow, that is really luminous white. Is bismuth any kinder or would it have been any kinder to the skin? It's definitely a lot safer than lead. And I think bismuth is still used in today's cosmetics. Oh, yeah. Yeah, very much so for that pearly glow that everyone loves now. The first thing that we actually need is the cold cream that we made earlier. Oh, nice. Yeah. If there's pigments around and palette knives, I just need to be involved. Fair enough. Can I have a go, please? You can. Oh, yeah, it's quite firm, isn't it? Oh, yes. If we don't add any more cold cream, I'm imagining that with a brush, actually, it might be a more natural look on the skin. Just imagine it sort of brushed on. You see, you can get quite a natural effect. Indeed. It looks quite nice, actually. It does look quite nice. So considering this treatment was supposed to last for several weeks, I'm not sure how you kept your makeup on that long, but maybe they just didn't wash their faces. When I rub it, this one feels like it's set and it's not going to go anywhere. And it's almost like this idea of polyfiller, the way it's described as being applied. Then they would have applied rouge, the lips and the cheeks. And then to finish it off, they would then paint on some fake blue veins. Well, I did manage to follow the recipe. So that is the blue vein pencil. Indeed. It looks like a blue vein itself. Yes, it does, doesn't it? So I'm going to use some modern day enamel. It's not that dissimilar, really, look. So if you can imagine that all over the face, all over the neck, all exposed skin. And then, because it's on my hands, I've got my veins there already. I'm just going to breathe on it, as they say in the recipe book. It's pretty, not much give in this. No. OK, let's have a go. I'm going to go over the top. Oh, wow. It does show. It does. Look at my veiny, veiny hands. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. That's quite realistic. Yeah. I'm not going to try out the enamelling technique on Queenie's face. I feel it would ruin the fresh face Victorian beauty look that I'm going for. But I am going to replicate the Madame X look on myself. So I'm going to attempt to enamel my face. I just want to see what it looks like close up. Most of the documentation talks about depilation before the foundation went on. So there's lots of talks of alkaline washes. And they would have taken away all of the fine hairs from the face, but also would have acted a bit like a modern day peel. And then, of course, there was face shaving and tweezing. Although I've got what we made in the lab, I've made a modern day concoction using highlighters and using glowing pearlized products, but mixed with a thick white paste that I think would have been quite similar to what they would have had. So I'm going to start layering it on. Of course, these modern day formulas are much easier to blend. No wonder it had to be done by a professional, as they said. Had I just had some hair removing treatment, my skin would be looking pretty plump and smooth. So that element in itself, I think, would make a huge difference today. Next would be the red element. So it's all about painting your face red and white, really. So I'm going to start with lipstick. This, again, was supposed to look natural, but obviously it really doesn't, especially against the white, ghostly white skin. The blush was pretty florid in the portraits we see. It was supposed to, again, look like this natural, youthful flush. So maybe even a little down onto the jawline, maybe, or sometimes onto the ears. Now, I'm sure once that was done, everything was powdered into place. OK, now for the pièce de résistance, which is the blue vein pencil. I'm going to have to blend them in a touch. It kind of works. If you're a lady of advancing years, and maybe you'd been a big society beauty, having something like this done would almost give you the courage and the confidence, maybe, to go out at night feeling that you looked fresh and young. I'm not against it. I just think, probably in daylight, this wouldn't look very good at all. And it's just so interesting that this amount of makeup, which even by today's standard is quite a lot, was part of a culture in which only natural beauty was acceptable. It strikes me that this extreme enamelling actually tells us everything we need to know about Victorian beauty. Only the very young and lucky could have the naturally perfect look that the age idealised. For everyone else, brilliant science and ruthless marketing stepped in with products to replicate it. But God forbid you actually got caught using any of them. So many books contain cautionary tales about pearl white makeup, mainly centred around the fear of being discovered wearing it, because apparently bismuth could change colour. There are several versions of this story, but one goes that a young woman is attending a chemistry lecture when a bottle of water containing some hydrogen sulphide is passed around. This was commonly known as Harrogate water and was being sold as a therapeutic mineral water. She takes a sniff, actually smells like rotten eggs, and then I quote, she becomes suddenly black in the face as her makeup reacts with the sulphur in the water. Not only is she revealed as a fraud and hugely embarrassed, but this serves as a lesson to rely more on mental than personal and artificial beauty in the future. Once again, we have the Victorian idea that true beauty comes from your inner qualities. I'm back with Queenie to try to naturally enhance her eyes. So now we have some castor oil for your eyebrows, and we still use this today, but they would have used it not only to condition the eyebrows, also it's sort of sneaky makeup as well, because look at that lovely, glossy, healthy brow. This is also good through the lashes, but I'm going to mix it with a bit of coal dust and we're going to have some sneaky mascara. Look down. And this would make your eyelashes grow really long. The only thing that could catch you out, of course, would be if you got caught in the rain all over, black streaks running down your face. And if you live in England. Yeah, it's probably going to happen. So this was a bit risky, I think, for a Victorian lady to try. Look down. Very nice though. Mascara did actually exist in the 19th century, but if a woman wanted to use it, she would have to nick it off her husband. It was known as mascaro and started as a theatrical product that was made from soap and black dye. It was used by men to tint and disguise grey in their beards. Men like women were supposed to look natural and what was natural when it came to men? Not shaving, by the looks of it. We may think we live in a beard-obsessed time now, but we've got nothing on the Victorians. I've asked historian Lucinda Hawksley to explain where this came from. At the beginning of the Victorian period, most men were clean-shaven, but then with the Crimean War in the mid-1850s, with the soldiers returning from the war who hadn't been able to shave, all had huge beards. Suddenly, that was a symbol of the hero, of a kind of macho man, and beards became instantly fashionable and remained fashionable for most of the rest of the 19th century. When I think of the military, I always think of the huge moustaches. I mean, they were just enormous. Really, the military moustache is a thing unto itself and it was seen as a very bad form for a man who wasn't in the military to grow a big military moustache. And it was actually mandated by law that soldiers in the British Army had to have a moustache. And this seems to have come from campaigns in India because Indian soldiers had a huge amount of facial hair and it was seen that they looked more virile and manly, so therefore the British had to start growing moustaches as well. And men who couldn't were in trouble. And so there was quite a trade in illegal kind of fake moustaches. And in fact, it was only during the First World War that the law was changed to permit soldiers and officers to be allowed to shave off their moustache should they wish to. I'm very drawn to this chap here, but if you can't grow this huge, enormous, lustrous beard, then again, you're maybe not quite a real man. Yes, and the whole big thing in Victorian society was conformity. So you needed to not step outside the norm. And I think for men, growing that big beard to show that you were part of that conformed society became very important. And what particular colours of beards? Was there a fashion for a black beard or a ginger beard? Definitely no red. In fact, there was a huge prejudice against red hair in general. Redheads, men and women, were finding life very difficult at that time because there was a huge amount of prejudice, kind of racial prejudice against the Scottish, the Irish. So it was a very kind of xenophobic thing. Queenie is safe. Pale blonde hair like hers was admired by scholars of the time, even if brown hair like Victoria's own was preferable. One scientist claimed his statistical study definitely proved that English gentlemen preferred brunettes when it came to marriage. But what hope was there for the prematurely grey? Or the redhead? Luckily, help was at hand. Hair dyes had been used since ancient times, but the Victorians made use of the new chemicals used in the cutting-edge art of photography. I've asked Sue's colleague, Neil Grazier, to make up a fashionable two-part dye from an original Victorian recipe. I can imagine that a lot of the formulas must have been quite lethal. I know that the latest thing was silver nitrate hair dye. And we know this from developing photographs because people that used to be in the darkroom would have marks all over their skin. Yes, and this particular hair dye would have used silver. The two-part process first required wetting the hair in gallic acid. The hair was allowed to dry. It was then sponged on with this silver ammonia solution. And only at that point would you start getting that black colour developing. What's the subtlety that you can achieve, do you think, of colour here? Not much. It's basically black or black. That level of black. There was lots of men that dyed their beards and they looked quite scary with that black hair and, you know, black beards. It was quite intense. What I'd call Lego head now. So let's get on with our Lego hair dye. So, Neil, the gallic acid has dried into the hair now and it's quite dark already. It's darkened it. There is the possibility that the gallic acid has reacted with a little bit of iron that might be present in the hair. So this might be enough for some people. If you didn't want to go the whole hog, possibly. That might well be the case. I mean, it's certainly more benign, so... No, let's not be benign. Let's go in with the silver nitrate. OK. In 1861, apparently, there was a travelling photographer. So he used to go around taking family portraits and things and then in the evening he had a little sideline. He'd use the leftover chemicals to dye beards and moustaches and hair. That sounds incredibly entrepreneurial. Very much so. What we're probably best doing is putting this under a really strong light. Yeah, so ideally bright sunlight would have helped this develop. We don't have that here. A flash would be really good to do that, so phones would be... OK, what about phones? Yeah, phones. Phones would be good. I'll get my phone. OK, so... We're like the paparazzi. This is a random thing to do. I've got some very interesting pictures. OK, let's have a look. Well, I would say that's definitely worked. It's definitely dyed the hair and it's better. It's more natural than I thought it was going to be. It's not as black and it's not as matte. And if you were grey and wanted to dye your hair, I think that's a really good result. When you think of how the hair was before... If we compare the two... Before and after, I mean, it's like night and day. I think I could be quite pleased with that for my grey, but I wouldn't be trying it any time soon. Once again, we've proved the Victorians were masters of innovation and secret cosmetic enhancement. It's time to put the finishing touches to Queenie's makeup. And she is perfect for this idealised look with her young, clear skin. So I've cleaned up her complexion, used kohl cream and powder as base. I've coloured her eyes and lashes with castor oil and kohl dust. And all of this using the very best of all that our secret makeup discoveries have to offer. I've actually been really impressed with the fabulous blush and the secret lip salve. Yeah, it's a really good colour. It's an interesting colour because it's very hard to define. It's one of those shades that's kind of orangey, pinky. Raspberry. Yeah. This could be my natural lip colour. It is. It's taken a lot of time and effort to produce something that is so subtle, you hardly see it. The perfect natural look. I've taken Queenie from this to this. The products the Victorians used are incredibly revealing of their love of science, their obsession with hygiene and their desire for conformity. There you go, Queenie. You look virtuous and good, but you are naturally beautiful. So Victorian makeup does suit you very well. The problem with it is it's such a narrow view of beauty. We've ended up with a natural look, but in the process have revealed it's not as innocent as it seems. With the amount of artifice involved, it could almost be a little bit sinister. When you start believing that the condition of someone's skin is an indication of their inner worth, then you're going to get into all sorts of trickery, secrets and lies. I'll take a full face of honest makeup any day.