Makeup in Marie Antoinette

[smhoffmann]

I noticed there are a few characters in the movie Marie Antoinette who wear very exaggerated white makeup and red cheeks, one elderly lady in particular, and I think the rest were older as well. I was wondering what the explanation is for this, when most of the characters are wearing very little makeup. Is it historically accurate?

Comments

[yaminagdh]

I believe that they were showing how fashion was morphing along with the times personally. The older generation was clinging to their make-up and wigs while the newer one was opening up to the hipper trends. Also as a historical note, older people would tend to wear more makeup because they believed it made their skin look younger as well as that it hid scarring from sickness(i.e. the pox, etc.) when in reality it did the opposite.

[sammmmmmmmm]

I doubt it, I've watched it many times and I've watched the behind the scenes and I really think its just a vehicle for the director to show how much of an 80's...Adam Ant fan she was.
I get the feeling its more about the clothes and using modern music then anything historical...although who is to say that they didn't wear as much make up in private as they did in public?

[auroraceleste]

As a general rule in historical movies the extras are dressed and styled more historically-accurately than the stars. In this case there's a bit of that going on, and a bit of the fact that older women would be more obvious when they're wearing makeup because older skin is rougher, more wrinkles, damaged from years of wearing lead-based foundation . . . The biggest makeup thing that I don't remember seeing is that a lot of people had scars from acne, smallpox, what have you on their faces, and in the 18th century it became popular to make patches, especially black velvet or silk taffeta, in cutesy shapes and glue them over the scars. The original "beauty mark".

[smhoffmann]

That is a good point (that the stars are less historically accurate), and something I wouldn't complain about. From reading Queen of Fashion I have the impression that Marie Antoinette wore more visible makeup than the movie shows. However, it makes it a better movie, since the audience probably wouldn't emotionally connect with a character who looked totally different from us.

[delabane]

Wasn't the whole wearing white makeup also associated with being pale and that one who is pale is wealthy (a sign that they don't need to go outside long enough to result getting a tan). Of course later on getting a tan was a statement you were rich enough to travel abroad.

People tend to stick to similar fashions in which they wore in their prime, so in the 1750's it wasn't unexpected to see older gentlemen wearing Periwigs from his prime in the 1720's - something a young fop of the 1750's wouldn't have been seen dead in.

[trystbat]

The older characters are wearing the older, traditional court styles, which Marie Antoinette found stifling. The Antonia Frasier bio that the movie is loosely based goes into detail about the contrast between the highly regimented life at Versailles & the more open, almost casual Austrian court MA was raised in.

French court fashion of the era required a lot of makeup, esp. rouge. This site has a nice summary of the ingredients that went into the white powder & rouge.