Mouche
Mouche ( plural mouches ; French for the fly ) is the name for a small, black cosmetic plaster. Mouches were worn by many women and some men in the 17th and 18th centuries - wherever French fashion and lifestyle set the tone.
The plasters were made of rubberized taffeta , velvet or silk, occasionally also of fine, soft leather, more rarely of paper. Different shapes were used: stars, hearts, crescent moons, diamonds, insects and others. Special small containers (boîtes à mouches) were used to store the patches and, thanks to their more or less elaborate design, also as prestige objects. They could be oval or round, made of gold, silver, rosewood or finely painted paper mache , of semi-transparent horn or ivory , or of copper with an enamel coating ; mostly they were artfully ornamented ; the inside of the lid was often provided with a mirror or a miniature portrait . The attachment of mouches was usually part of the detailed morning toilet. The copperplate Le Matin (“The Morning”) by N. Arnoult shows a lady at the dressing table - while her hairstyle is being prepared, she is busy putting on the cosmetic patches.
The aesthetic effect of the mouches was that they emphasized the extremely light complexion through the greatest possible light-dark contrast , which at the time was considered elegant and was produced by the copious use of white make-up and powder. On another level, the small patches developed into conveyors of certain messages. As ciphers in a gallant game among members of the “better society”, they communicated something to the initiate about the characteristics of their wearer, depending on where they were placed on the face, neck or breast.
In a French lexicon of the 19th century, the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX. siècle of Larousse , nine different characteristics are named, which could be signaled with the mouches . After that, cosmetic patches wore:
- the passionate woman (la passionnée) - in the corner of the eye;
- the dignified woman (la majestueuse) - on the forehead;
- the joking woman (l'enjouée) - over the dimples that appear when laughing;
- the woman who has nothing against love affairs (la galante) - on the cheek;
- the woman who likes to kiss (la baiseuse) - in the corner of her mouth;
- the exuberantly happy woman (la gaillarde) - on the nose;
- the flirtatious woman (la coquette) - above the lips;
- the discreet woman (la discrète) - under the lower lip, almost on the chin;
- the “thief” (la voleuse) - to hide a small impurity on the skin.
Other sources leave out some of these variants and give them additional meanings, for example: the irresistible (l'assassine) - plaster near the eyes , the revealing (la révéleuse) - plaster on the breast.
In Germany, the fashion of the mouches was adopted under its French name, often in Germanized spelling ("the musks"). In 1739 the “ Universal Lexicon ” of the publisher Johann Heinrich Zedler said: “We Germans get our fashions […] generally from France, although most of us have the prejudice that the French are most adept at inventing such things.” Satirical criticism of the vain effort associated with the beauty patches was expressed by several representatives of the Enlightenment in Germany , such as the writers Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener (1714–1771), Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae (1726–1777) and Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813 ).
literature
- Rosemarie Gerken: La Toilette. The staging of a room in the 18th century in France. Georg Olms, Hildesheim a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-487-13304-1 , pp. 94-100.
- Sigrid Metken : A piece of jewelry that she borrowed from us flies… . In: Jutta Frings (Ed.): Geist und Galanterie. Art and Science in the 18th Century from the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Seemann, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-363-00797-3 , pp. 90/91.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rosemarie Gerken: La Toilette. The staging of a room in the 18th century in France. P. 97.
- ↑ fashion. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 21, Leipzig 1739, columns 700-712.