Cosmetic secrets of Russian empresses

The story is told by an expert in Russian history, candidate of art history Nina Alekseevna IVANITSKAYA. Russian queens and noble ladies were great fashionistas. They touched up their faces every day, used powder, blush, eyebrow pencils and lipstick. The symbol of beauty was an image sung in Russian folk tales: “The face is white as snow, the cheeks are rosy, like poppies, the eyebrows are black, with a sable tint.” They tried to imitate this image until the mid-nineteenth century.

Ladies did not leave the house, and queens did not leave their bedchambers, without applying a thick layer of white powder to their faces, without rouging their cheeks and drawing on their eyebrows. The secrets of preparing cosmetics were kept strictly, passed on to the closest friends, and often became the meaning of intimate, confidential conversations. For a long time, the basis of powder was flour. This was not very convenient, because the royal outfits were covered with snow-white pollen, and during walks, a touch of powder was carried by the wind onto the cavaliers' camisoles. In the eighteenth century, a recipe for persistent white was brought to the royal chambers from England, which was used for a century. The egg white was whipped until it became thick foam, and ground eggshells, salt and white poppy seeds were added to it. This thick mass, diluted with oil, was smeared on the face. And then a layer of chalk or lime was applied to this adhesive base. The same composition, diluted with spring water instead of vegetable oil, was used instead of soap.

Anna Ioanovna preferred this cream-powder: wheat ground into dust with the addition of zinc white. Women of all classes painted their eyebrows with soot diluted with alcohol. In home-grown cosmetics, the most gentle products were blush and lipstick, which were made from ground dry beets, carrot-beet juice and glycerin. And to prevent the royal skin from deteriorating, becoming wrinkled and flaccid, masks were actively used. One of the most popular, which Elizaveta Petrovna preferred, was a lentil mask: soaked and mashed peas and lentils, whipped egg whites were added to vegetable oil and dried in the oven. Then diluted with warm milk.

Honey was considered an exceptional remedy. It was mixed with oatmeal, rice flour, and soaked beans. Catherine the Great wiped her face with honey every day, and then applied goose fat or lard to her skin. The wives of Peter the Great - both the quiet Evdokia Lopukhina and the broken Catherine the First - used “meat” masks, known since the time of Ivan the Terrible. Before going to bed, they covered their faces with steamed veal. They washed it off with warmed calf blood. The skin became soft and smooth. Anna Ioanovna rubbed her face and neck with pieces of steamed liver and warm ghee.

Catherine the Great washed her face with pieces of ice in the morning and evening. She also introduced the craze for fruit masks. Before her favorite morning coffee, the Empress often rubbed applesauce into her face and décolleté and, by the way, always ate at least five sour apples a day. A strawberry mask was considered a cleansing nourishing mask. The crushed berries were allowed to harden on the face and then washed off with heavy cream. Noble people loved to soak in a bath of strawberry compote. This type of bath was preferred over the ancient tradition of taking fresh milk baths. To make her face and body white, Elizaveta Petrovna rubbed herself with cucumber juice and sauerkraut before the bath. To destroy freckles and spots on the body, crushed magpie eggs or dandelion flowers infused with vodka were considered effective. Pimples were reduced with viburnum and elderberry juice. After the mask, a cream was applied to the skin, which included fat, honey, glycerin and aromatic substances.