Hi, I'm Fashion Historian Amber Butchart.
I'm here at Osborne on the Isle of Wight to follow in the royal foosteps of Queen Victoria.
Osborne was the holiday home for the Queen and her family through much of the 19th century
and today it's cared for by English Heritage.
Victoria retreated here away from the prying eyes of the public but today we have a special invitation
So join us as we recreate another history inspired look and find out more about
the Queen, her home and the country she ruled over.
Hello!
Hey Amber, how's it going?
Good thanks. So today, Queen Victoria. Now she reigned from 1837 to 1901 and after Queen Elizabeth II
she's actually our longest reigning monarch to date.
We're here in the glorious surroundings of Osbourne her holiday home so Rebecca
what look are you going to do for us today?
On our beautiful model, Hollie, I'm going to be creating a Queen Victoria inspired makeup look.
You can see from Victoria's various portraits that her look was very much a fair but not excessively white,
skin a little flush of color in the cheeks and very neat well groomed hair
So it's kind of the, it's the ultimate no makeup makeup tutorial that we're going to do today
Lovely!
There's a quote going round that Victoria herself thought that makeup was vulgar
Now while we don't know the while we don't know the source of that quote what we do know is
in the Victorian era makeup became much less obvious
It became much more subtle
And so where would she have worn a look like the one you're going to create?
Well, let's imagine that Holly is going to be
getting ready to have her portrait painted so that she needs to look very elegant
So let's start with the first part of our makeup tutorial and we'll talk
skin care and skin prep.
Here at Osborne if you go upstairs to Queen Victoria's
Dressing Room you can see her dressing table and her wash stand and I'm so
curious I really want to know what's in all those little pots. It's tricky to
know what Victoria wore on her face, but we do have some really nice quotes
from and Frieda Arnold who was one of her dresses at the time who said the
Queen liked to go to her dressing table around 8 o'clock in the evening when the
maids will have set out some elderflower water
for her to wash her face and hands and also some chamomile tea for her to bathe
her eyes. So let's start with some chamomile tea to bathe the eyes if you
keep your eyes closed for me Hollie.
Is that soothing? How does it feel?
Yeah, it's lovely.
Chamomile is really known for being soothing and calming and
I'm sure Victoria would have appreciated this after a long day of
state affairs, horse riding and walking around Osborne
And now let's wash that face with some elderflower water
After Victoria's had her skin prepped and cleansed
we'll then move on to the next step which is kind of a foundation base
Now we just stepped outside to do Hollie's base because we can't use loose powder
in a historical building. I've got a brush with almost nothing on it just for
some touch-ups. And we've used zinc oxide now one of the strongest differences for
Victorian makeup is the move away from a really heavy white painted base and the
move away from using white lead as that base.
Zinc oxide came in and replaced
white lead and it was great because it's sheer, it still gives you that slightly white finish
Most importantly it won't kill you - Yay! - when you wear it
which is brilliant
We still use zinc oxide in makeup today. You'll see it most often in
sunscreen products and you'll probably see that if you've ever put a high
factor sunscreen on your skin you can see that kind of white cast
Oh that sort of chalky nature?
Yeah.
Now if you could get your hands on zinc oxide brilliant if you can't get your hands on
zinc oxide sometimes middle-class - working-class women might use things
like starch or maybe chalk dust to make their faces look lighter or they might
resort to some recipes that they've seen in books or magazines.
We see a real rise in magazines in this period. The Industrial Revolution sees a huge
expansion of the middle-class and along with this a lot of journal sort of
etiquette journals beauty fashion manuals to help people negotiate their
new social position. And one of note in particular that comes from the period
we're looking at - the 1850s - is the English Woman's Domestic magazine.
This was published by Samuel Beaton who was the husband of Isabella Beaton who was
famous for her book of household management.
Of course, Mrs Beeton!
Exactly! So this would cover it was aimed squarely at a middle class audience that
would cover all of these areas and even some political commentary as well,
and fiction, all kinds of things for middle-class Victorian women to read
But not everyone was so prosperous at this time, were they?
No definitely not
The Industrial Revolution also caused huge amounts of poverty and squalor in some
urban areas and also tuberculosis. This claimed sixty to seventy thousand lives
in each decade of Victoria's reign
It was a serious epidemic in Queen Victoria's reign, but also tuberculosis
formed kind of a beauty movement
People thought that the symptoms of tuberculosis were beautiful
The hectic flush cheek, a pale skin and also brightened eyes and because tuberculosis
was thought to be beautiful, women may have started to emulate some of the symptoms
So they wore more white powder to give them that pale look, they
might have added more rouge for the for the flush of a fever and they also might
have used belladonna which is a chemical that makes your pupils dilate
Dilated pupils can be a sign of sickness and it also is believed to make women look
more attractive
I'm not going to use belladonna, you'll be grateful to hear
I'm going to use just some good old eyedrops, so if you would pop your head
back for me let's pop some eyedrops in here and see if we can give you that
consumptive chic
There we go
So shiny
One might almost say glassy
Women didn't necessarily wear a lot of product around their eyes at this time
Kohl was considered vulgar and also not worth the deception, so something simple and more
natural was often used maybe it might be castor oil on the eyebrows and the
eyelashes to give them a gloss and a shine and to help them grow longer and stronger
We're now onto the cheeks stage of our makeup and I'm going to be using
our good old friend rouge
Now rouge has been around in many forms for hundreds of years and in the Victorian era
there were quite a few different forms of rouge even though it was very subtly used
The version that I'm going to use is a liquid rouge and this was often made using
either vegetable color maybe
beetroot or possibly carmine which is derived from cochineal beetles mixed with
alcohol and water and I read one source that suggests that you apply the liquid rouge
with a hankerchief. I've never never done this before so let's see how
hankerchief application works
It's not bad!
Now while we don't know whether Victoria herself wore rouge, she does make a couple of mentions
to it in her diary, specifically other people wearing it
and mentioning that they look better for wearing a little bit of rouge
So maybe she wasn't too against makeup
Lips are really natural in this era. Some people said that rosy lips were the
reward of temperate living and exercise outdoors. We're gonna use a rose-tinted lip salve
There were loads of recipes for how to create your own lip salves
but also this was the era where makeup started to be mass-produced and the
first commercially available lipstick in a tube was available towards the end of
the 19th century
Mass-production was really impacting fashion at this time as well
In the 1850s the cage crinoline is developed using rings of steel and this
is called the first industrial fashion because of the way it was manufactured
And it said that by the early 1860s apparently one seventh of the weekly output of
steel in Sheffield actually went towards making these crinolines
So it was a very you know huge fashion at this time. Queen Victoria apparently
even succumbed to the cage crinoline just once when it was really, really hot
too hot to wear her layers and layers and layers of petticoats that she
otherwise would have warden to create the same silhouettes.
Now we've got our Queen Victoria inspired face, let's move on to something that's very iconic for
Queen Victoria and that was her hair and her hairstyles. Now Victoria would have
her hair done by a maid in the morning just into a simple twist and then her
iconic hairstyle was created by her hairdressers. She had up to two
hairdressers on retainer any one time that would do her hair daily and her
very neat, plaited, low bun style reflects that Victorian sensibility of modesty
and simplicity, but also that having loose hair meant
that you might also have loose morals
Ah yes Victoria and Albert styled
themselves as a very respectable couple so no loose hair to be seen on Victoria
But it is quite relevant for our beachside setting here at Osborne because the
seaside was one of the places where you might actually come across loose hair
and some of ideas of loose morality that go alongside that.
The seaside starts to impact your wardrobe as well
You would pack specific seaside dresses for your
trip and these would be a bit more outlandish than fashions that you might
wear in the city centre so maybe striped or maybe with a sort of a nautical touch
as you can see here
Now while you work on the hair, I am going to go and find out much more about
Victoria's reign, so I'll see you guys later
See you later
Michael this is quite the holiday home what can you tell me about Osborne?
Well, Osborne was built by Victoria and Albert as a private family home they had recently
got married so like any newly married couple I guess
they wanted a place of their own not a state residence this was a private
family home somewhere where they could escape to from the pressures of court
life in London and Windsor.
Victoria is known as a ruler who had a very strict moral code
How did her upbringing impact that?
She had quite a strict upbringing. She was brought up by her mother, her father had
died when she was just you know not even a year old and her mother was really
reacting I suppose against the loose morals of the previous Georgian period
and Queen Victoria remembered her childhood as a rather melancholy affair
really, a rather lonely affair.
And so that must have also influenced the way
that she felt about family and children as well if she was brought up on her own?
Yes, I mean I think because she didn't really have much of a normal family life
herself she in turn reacted against this and when she married Albert and they had
children of their own they wanted to create this sort of idyllic happy family
life something that neither Victoria or Albert had really had themselves as children
Victoria's reign is known as a huge period of change especially
with the Industrial Revolution. What are the global ramifications of this?
I think the technological changes were huge. There was an outlook, it was possible to
look outward much more and communicate globally and of course this led to the
building up of a huge empire during Victoria's reign and it's appropriate
that we're standing in this room talking at the moment, this fabulous Indian interior
because India became a part of a very important central part of
Victoria's Empire so much so that she became Empress of India in the 1870s
What kind clothes with Victoria have worn here at Osborne?
The kind of clothes she wore were comparatively relaxed, Osborne
being a family home there wasn't this formality of dress here that there would
have been elsewhere, no crowns and tiaras for instance. So floaty summer dresses,
muslins, light silks that sort of thing
And you have some items of clothing here
that Victoria actually wore. What can you tell me about them?
We've got a night dress that we know that she wore. It's monogrammed with her V R with a crown on the top
Wow! It's my dream to have monogrammed pyjamas
You must! You must!
We've also got a couple of pairs of stockings a white pair and a black pair
both of which have got again the Queen's initials on the top. The black pair were
probably morning stockings I think I mean famously Queen Victoria spent most
of her later years as a widow
Thanks so much Michael I'm gonna go and see how
our Victoria is coming together
Pleasure
Oh wow Hollie, you look amazing! Rebecca well done this is fantastic
What a transformation. I absolutely love this look it's so ideal, the lace is great
Victoria loved lace, she even collected antique lace and she had some specially
commissioned Honiton lace from Devon for her wedding dress which she rewore again
and again throughout her life at various events. She was also known to wear lilac as well
so it's just you look like a young Victoria, it's perfect
It's such a stunning dress isn't it?
It really is! And the hair really is incredible these
flowers are amazing were they from?
The flowers I'm completely in love with
they're actually from the Osborne estate so we've had them fresh from the garden
because we know that Victoria really loved to wear flowers in her hair and
she loved to wear fresh flowers, especially while she was here at Osborne
Oh, how gorgeous!
There's some significant flowers from Osborne too
The Osborne myrtle which Princess Victoria, which was Queen Victoria's daughter
had in her wedding bouquet and then it's gone on to become
a bit royal tradition so Princess Diana had it in her wedding bouquet and so did
Catherine Middleton and then most lately Meghan Markle too
So it all started right here at Osborne?
It absolutely did!
How lovely!
How does it feel?
It just feels amazing. It's so elegant and the makeup is very subtle
and it's actually very close to how I like to wear my own makeup but
obviously with this beautiful gown and the flowers of my hair. I wish I could
have fresh flowers every day!
I know! I'm so jealous of this whole look. So I think
it's a lovely day outside, why don't we go outside and enjoy the gardens?
Holle looks so regal as our Queen Victoria and it's impossible to imagine
a prettier spot to have brought this look to life
You can learn more about Queen Victoria by visiting Osborne for yourself
Click on the screen now to start planning your trip
Could you pull off this look or is there another
historical period that's more fitting to your style? Let us know in the comments below
Until next time, I'm Amber Butchart, and thanks for joining me here at Osborne