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What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything
Dark or brunette? Fair or swarthy? A paragon of beauty or a refined charmer? Our picture of Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen has become distorted over five centuries – but new research by Owen Emmerson and others comes closer to revealing her true appearance
Close your eyes and picture Anne Boleyn. Chances are you can conjure up a pretty clear and detailed image in your imagination – because few figures in English history seem as visually familiar as Henry VIII’s second queen. Representations of her face appear everywhere: in films, television dramas and novels, in museum gift shops and digital reconstructions. She is often depicted in popular culture as an elegant brunette whose sophistication distinguishes her from others at court. Over time, this image has hardened into something close to fact. Anne Boleyn, we are told, was devastatingly beautiful. Yet this certainty is built on fragile foundations, and surviving evidence provides a less concrete understanding of Anne’s appearance. No formal painted portraits from life survive today, though images in a number of smaller, more intimate formats – particularly miniatures – are candidates for having captured her true likeness based on contemporary encounters. The more-familiar portraits featuring the now-iconic ‘B’ pendant necklace, meanwhile, were likely created decades later, influenced by politics, artistic convention and hindsight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/DXFXNM-38bec64-e1773309603951.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman with long dark braids, wearing a white period-style gown, sits on a cushioned bed and gently holds a baby wrapped in richly patterned blue and gold fabric. Dark wooden furniture and white bedding frame the intimate, historical-feeling scene" title="Natalie Dormer played Anne Boleyn in the television series The Tudors, which perpetuated modern ideas of the ill-fated queen as a dark-haired beauty (Image by Alamy)" /> For generations, historians assumed that any accurate representations created during Anne’s life had been lost altogether, erased after her execution in 1536 on the orders of Henry VIII. That story is compelling, but it is wrong. My research – which underpins Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn, a new exhibition at Anne’s childhood home, Hever Castle – suggests that her true likeness remained visible long after her dramatic death. Her image circulated widely in several different forms: in print, on medals and in drawings that outlived her. Alongside written descriptions left by those who saw her, these sources allow us to come close to understanding how Anne Boleyn looked. They also prompt a more revealing question: during her lifetime, was Anne admired for beauty – at least, as the 16th century understood it? And how much did beauty really matter in a court where power, conviction and function carried far greater weight? Ideals of beauty Today, audiences are encouraged to believe that Anne Boleyn must have been very beautiful indeed to have displaced Queen Catherine of Aragon in Henry VIII’s affections, and to have inspired him to reshape England’s religious and political landscape in order to marry her. This assumption reflects modern ideas about attraction and agency far more than it does the reality of Tudor mores. Different priorities shaped ideals of female beauty then: light colouring and complexion were widely admired. In 16th-century England, though, beauty alone rarely secured influence. At court, education, connections and presence mattered far more than looks. Intelligence, conversation and the ability to command attention in a highly performative environment were prized qualities. Anne excelled in these attributes. Read more | Anne Boleyn’s fatal French connection Anne stood out, but not because she perfectly embodied an ideal of beauty. Her continental education, her penchant for French fashions and her finely honed courtly manner set her apart in a milieu still shaped by conservative English expectations. Contemporary responses to her appearance consistently suggest moderate attractiveness rather than conventional beauty. To understand that distinction properly, we must turn to the accounts of her appearance and demeanour from people who saw her. Consistent picture Contemporary descriptions of Anne are limited but broadly consistent. Simon Grynaeus, a German humanist who visited the English court in 1531, wrote to a compatriot that she was “young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion”. In October 1532, the Venetian ambassador Carlo Capello, in a report later recorded in Marino Sanuto’s Diarii, described her as “not one of the handsomest women in the world… of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised… and her eyes, which are black and beautiful”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/PD1438753-1778ee6-e1773309357932.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Engraved profile portrait of a man with long hair and a full beard, wearing high‑collared, layered Renaissance garments. The image is rendered with fine linework and cross‑hatching" title="An 18th-century engraving of German scholar Simon Grynaeus who, having met Anne Boleyn, described her as “young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion” (Image by Topfoto)" /> Lancelot de Carle, secretary to the French ambassador in London, wrote a long poetic account of Anne’s fall and execution in 1536, emphasising her expression and presence rather than physical features. Even sympathetic observers were measured: the reformist cleric John Barlow described her as “reasonably good-looking”, a phrase that in Tudor usage suggested composure and refinement rather than striking beauty. What emerges is not the image of a woman celebrated for physical perfection but of someone whose appearance was animated by intelligence and presence. Observers repeatedly returned to her eyes and manner. The French diplomat Lancelot de Carle said of her eyes that she “knew well how to use [them] with effect”, capturing a sense of engagement, wit and command that made her captivating in person. For centuries, the absence of a painted portrait from Anne’s lifetime was explained by a dramatic story: that Henry VIII ordered every likeness of her be destroyed after her execution. The image of a furious king erasing the woman for whom he had broken with Rome is powerful, but has no basis in contemporary sources. The story appeared first in the 19th century, when historians sought an explanation for Anne’s apparent visual disappearance. What happened after the queen’s fall was administrative rather than vengeful. Anne’s badges and monograms were removed from royal buildings and replaced with those of her successor, Jane Seymour, just as Catherine of Aragon’s emblems had earlier been replaced by Anne’s. The King’s Works accounts for September 1536 list payments for removing Anne’s devices alongside those of Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s former chief minister, by then long dead. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3BDA0P2-4f33c37-e1773310304248.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Gilded wooden sculpture of a bird holding a staff. Intricate carved motifs and textured wings stand out against a red display background." title="A falcon badge from Hampton Court. This emblem of Anne Boleyn remained in place after her demise, despite claims that Henry ordered all traces of her be removed (Image by Alamy)" /> No orders to destroy Anne’s portraits have been found, and even the command to remove her emblems was carried out only partly. Many of her falcon badges remain in the roof of Hampton Court’s Great Hall, blackened with paint but intact. Moreover, inventories taken after Henry’s death show that he continued to own objects that had once belonged to Anne and were decorated with her iconography, albeit packed away in chests. Anne herself had become valueless to him, but the gold and silver fashioned into her goods had not. He did not destroy them, just ensured that they were no longer seen. The people’s prints Though no painted panel portrait survives from Anne’s lifetime, images of her certainly do. Some of the most revealing were created not for the elite interiors of palaces but for public circulation. In the summer of 1533, the prolific printer Wynkyn de Worde was employed to publish a pamphlet titled The Noble Tryumphaunt Coronacyon of Quene Anne. Its cover features a small woodcut long dismissed by historians as a generic courtly scene. However, in collaboration with historian Jessica Carey-Bunning, I have identified this as a narrative composition including three contemporary images of Anne Boleyn at distinct stages of her relationship with Henry VIII. The woodcut provides a visual sequence affirming the validity of the union. To the left, Henry courts Anne; in the centre, the couple are joined in marriage; and in the most prominent image, at the right, Henry and Anne are crowned beneath a cloth of estate, the king’s hand resting on his queen’s stomach. To a contemporary viewer, this was an explicit declaration of pregnancy. When the pamphlet was published, Anne was about six months pregnant with the child who would reign as Elizabeth I. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL3286974-85c45de-e1773310578859.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A detailed black and white woodcut showing the same two figures three times over, in different positions, facing each other, standing and sitting" title="A 1533 woodcut shows three stages in the relationship between Henry and Anne, from left to right: wooing, the wedding, and a tender moment apparently signalling pregnancy (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> This woodcut image operated as a tool of legitimacy, fertility and dynastic hope. It was intended not to capture Anne’s features but, rather, to put her face to work. It was circulated deliberately and widely at the most politically sensitive moment of her queenship. Other contemporary images reinforce this visibility. A lead prototype or proof known as the ‘Moost Happi’ medal, likely commissioned in anticipation of a male heir and struck in 1534, depicts Anne in part profile wearing a gable hood, and bears the initials AR (for Anna Regina). Edward Hawkins, keeper of antiquities at the British Museum in the 19th century, suggested that another surviving lead prototype showing Henry was a companion to Anne’s medal. My discovery of a fully cast example of the companion medal of Henry, fashioned as a hat pin in modest tin, indicates that these likenesses were destined for a wide distribution beyond the court – an effort to disseminate images of the king and his new queen. Read more | Tudors in turmoil: deciphering Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors Another contemporary image of Anne survives in a sketch of her coronation banquet, depicting her crowned beneath a cloth of estate in Westminster Hall, the focal point of an elaborate theatrical display. Even in this crude drawing, Anne is unmistakably the axis around which the ceremony revolves. Together, these show that Anne was among the most visually represented queens of early Tudor England. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/hip2593496-f6287f1-e1773310819221.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A detailed pencil and chalk profile portrait of a person wearing a wrapped head covering, shown against a lightly toned background." title="Hans Holbein the Younger's drawing, likely depicting Anne, shows a number of key similarities to Hollar's picture (below) (Image by Topfoto)" /> Something rarer also survives: a glimpse of Anne Boleyn as she may have been seen by those who knew her personally. A chalk drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, depicts a woman in a fur-trimmed nightgown with a simple coif, her eyes lowered in contemplation. Though its subject has long been debated, recent scholarship by Dr Kate Heard has fundamentally reshaped understanding of this work, strongly supporting its identification as Anne Boleyn. The drawing dates securely to Holbein’s second period in England, when he was working at the heart of the Tudor court, producing preparatory studies for both painted portraits and miniatures – and, crucially, working extensively under Anne’s patronage. The apparent informality of the portrait, once used to argue against the identification, now strengthens it. Comparable works by the Horenbout workshop similarly depict elite sitters such as Henry VIII’s son, the Duke of Richmond, in a state of undress, intended for private viewing. Technical examination by the Royal Collection Trust has revealed that the sitter’s hair was originally far darker than it appears today. Layers of red, brown and black chalk have been largely worn away, with only remnants visible. Most compelling, however, is the later inscription identifying Anne as the sitter, based on an attribution by Sir John Cheke, who had met Anne in 1534, benefited from her patronage, and was closely connected to her circle through his wife, Mary Hill. If identified correctly, which now seems highly likely, this drawing represents the most direct surviving contemporary likeness of Anne. It shows her not as a crowned emblem of dynastic hope, as her public image had been crafted, but as a thinking, contemplative and private individual. The Windsor drawing also unlocks the meaning of a later engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar titled Faith, or St Barbara, produced in 1647. This print, based on a now-lost Holbein design once in the Earl of Arundel’s collection, depicts a crowned female figure holding a chalice and wafer set against a landscape of cliffs and water. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2TCATRR-055fb42-e1773310923192.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A finely detailed historical engraving depicting a crowned woman in elaborate robes. She stands holding a large chalice with a smooth sphere balanced on its rim. The line work is delicate and textured, and the background features soft shading and cloudlike forms, giving the scene a symbolic or allegorical tone." title="Wenceslaus Hollar based his engraving Faith, or Saint Barbara on a picture by Hans Holbein the Younger (Image by Alamy)" /> When compared closely with the Windsor drawing, the resemblance is striking: they share the same profile, jawline, eye shape and cranial structure. The correspondence between the two strongly suggests that Holbein’s use of Anne’s face for Saint Barbara was drawn from his preparatory study. In this reading, the Windsor drawing was not an isolated likeness but part of a broader artistic conception. The choice of that saint is significant because, like the reformist Anne, Barbara was associated with steadfast Christian faith and resistance to coercion when compelled to revert to traditional beliefs. In Anne’s book of hours, King’s MS 9, the illumination of Saint Barbara shares compositional similarities with the Windsor sketch and Hollar engraving, including a distinctive looped plait, indicating direct visual continuity. Portraying Anne in this guise would have aligned her queenship with conscience and reform. Seen in this light, the image becomes both devotional and political. It presents Anne not simply as consort but as belief embodied. Saint Barbara was martyred and executed by the sword – a parallel that later viewers of this image could hardly have missed. The tragic irony is inescapable, though clearly it lies beyond the image’s original intent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL7392888-edf5339-e1773314139385.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A circular portrait miniature of Anne Boleyn framed in gold. She wears a richly decorated Tudor headdress with gold embroidery and pearls, a dark gown with a square lace‑trimmed neckline, and a chain necklace, set against a deep blue background" title="Other portrait miniatures – including this one now in the collection of the Duke of Bucchleuch – share "a striking physiognomy" with other paintings (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> The possibility that Anne’s contemporary likeness survives in smaller, more intimate painted formats is strongly supported by this pairing of the Windsor sketch and the image of her as Saint Barbara. Two other near-identical portrait miniatures – one now in the collection of the Duke of Bucchleuch, the other in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada – long associated with Anne, share a striking physiognomy with these two. When viewed together, the alignment of the facial structures is too close to be dismissed as a coincidence. These works appear to preserve a recognisable likeness circulating within and shortly after Anne’s lifetime, intended for private recognition rather than public proclamation. Though we can’t be absolutely certain of the person whom they portray, these miniatures stand as the most plausible painted candidates for capturing Anne Boleyn’s likeness from life. Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love Changing faces After her execution, Anne’s image fell out of use. When it re-emerged during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I, it was in a radically altered political landscape. One of the most familiar images of Anne today is the portrait painted c1584 and catalogued as NPG 668 in the National Portrait Gallery. Long treated as a posthumously created likeness of Anne herself, it preserves something else: Elizabeth’s face. Art historian Lawrence Hendra has identified the creator of this famous panel painting as the as-yet-unnamed ‘Pearl Artist’. Comparing this artist’s other works – including portraits of Elizabeth I, her half-sister Mary I and her great-grandfather, Edward IV – it is clear that the painter used the same facial pattern for each sitter, including Anne Boleyn. The elongated facial structure, refined nose and controlled expression closely mirror Elizabeth’s physiognomy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-92818829-f98bc7d-e1773311146880.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant. At the top of the painting, Latin text identifies her as “Anna Bolina, wife of Henry VIII.”" title="The 'Pearl Artist' painting of Anne. This was produced c1584 (Image by Getty Images)" /> This effort to make Elizabeth’s relatives, some of whom likely bore no resemblance to one another, look alike was deliberate. In the 1580s, Elizabeth’s position was vulnerable. She was unmarried, without an heir, and facing both internal Catholic resistance and external threat. So repainting her ancestors with her own facial features anchored her visually as the rightful queen at a time when her legitimacy was again in question. Ensuring that Elizabeth looked like her father’s relatives as well as her mother, who had been accused of adultery, was a covert attempt to transform Anne from a condemned queen into a dynastic foundation stone, visually legitimising her daughter’s rule. A different but equally deliberate innovation appears in the so-called Hever Rose portrait. Recent multi-modal scientific analysis by the Hamilton Kerr Institute, combined with dendrochronology (the dating of the wooden panel), places its painting in c1583, just one year before the famous picture in the National Portrait Gallery. Infrared reflectography reveals that the artist initially followed a pre-existing design but then interrupted it, inserting fully articulated hands holding a rose. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Anne-Boleyn-16th-Century-Hever-Rose-24ca6bb-e1773311339212.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant. She has her hands held up against her chest. At the top of the painting, Latin text identifies her as “Anna Bolina, wife of Henry VIII.”" title="The Hever Rose portrait, painted c1583, is notable in deliberately depicting Anne’s hands – probably an attempt to nullify defamatory claims that she had possessed six fingers (Image by Hever Castle)" /> This moment matters, because it marks the first time Anne’s hands appeared in her posthumous iconography – a choice that was almost certainly polemical. In the early 1580s, defamatory claims by Nicholas Sander alleging that Anne possessed a sixth finger were already circulating widely in manuscript, years before they appeared in print. By depicting elegant, unblemished hands, with each finger made carefully visible, the artist offers a quiet but pointed rebuttal to this claim. Both portraits respond to the same anxiety. In a period when Elizabeth’s legitimacy was under attack, Anne’s image was re-engineered to defend it: her face reshaped to mirror the queen’s, her body corrected to refute slander. Art became a form of political repair. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL872290-3b47074-e1773313278928.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A highly detailed Elizabethan portrait showing a figure in an opulent gown covered with pearls, gemstones, and intricate gold embroidery. A tall, floral-patterned lace ruff frames the neck, and the sitter’s tightly curled hair is topped with a pearl‑ and jewel‑encrusted headdress. The dark background emphasizes the elaborate textures and craftsmanship of the clothing and accessories." title="Contemporary portraits, like the one of Elizabeth I above, were clearly based on the same facial pattern used in the 'Pearl Artist' painting of Anne (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Lost likeness Nearly five centuries after her execution, we may never know precisely what Anne Boleyn looked like. Her face survives only in fragments, refracted through prisms of politics, art and memory. Yet this uncertainty is not a failure of evidence; it is part of her history. The images and descriptions that survive show that Anne was not invisible, and not admired solely for her beauty. She was compelling because of her presence, intelligence and conviction. She understood the power of being seen, and used imagery, print and ceremony to assert her place in the world. In the end, the question of her appearance matters not because it satisfies curiosity but because it restores agency. Anne Boleyn was not merely a face shaped by others but an active participant – through her patronage of Holbein and the Horenbout family, not least – in how she was represented, remembered and contested. Approaching 500 years on, we are still learning to see her clearly. Unpicking locks What colour was Anne Boleyn's hair? Modern portrayals often depict Anne with jet-black hair, reinforcing an image of dark, exotic beauty. The historical record, however, is more ambiguous. Contemporary descriptions mention dark eyes and darker complexion, but none explicitly describe hair colour – likely because it may not have seemed remarkable enough to comment upon. Some later sources describe Anne as “witch-like” with black hair; others suggest chestnut or reddish tones. The poet Thomas Wyatt may have been referring to her when he wrote of a “brunet” woman. In Tudor usage, that could refer to dark hair, darker skin or both, and was often used to signal complexion rather than colouring alone. Genetics adds more uncertainty. Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I, was red-haired, as was Henry VIII in his youth. Red hair is linked to variants of the MC1R gene expressed only if inherited from both parents, so Anne must have carried at least one such variant. Though not proof that she herself was red-haired, this significantly increases the likelihood, and makes chestnut or auburn tones entirely plausible. Later portraits often show Anne with lighter reddish-brown hair. These may reflect attempts to align her appearance more closely with Elizabeth’s, reinforcing dynastic continuity. In a culture where fair hair was associated with virtue, this shift was politically advantageous. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-544168286-132885d-e1773314361550.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant." title="A late 16th-century portrait shows Anne with reddish hair, again perhaps tying her to Elizabeth (Image by Getty Images)" /> This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
"She was like an angel – albeit one with claws": Zandra Rhodes chooses Adel Rootstein (1930–62) as her history hero
Fashion designer Zandra Rhodes chooses Adel Rootstein as her history hero
In profile Born in South Africa to Russian parents, Adel Rootstein became arguably the leading British mannequin designer from the late 1950s onwards. She revolutionised mannequin design and played a key behind-the-scenes role in the London fashion scene of the 'swinging sixties', founding the successful mannequin company Rootstein with her husband, industrial designer Richard Hopkins. She died in London at the age of 62. When did you first hear about Adel Rootstein? When she turned up at the front door of my little design studio near Paddington Station in London in 1969, following my first fashion collection. She’d tracked me down, wanting some dresses of mine for the mannequins in the showroom she’d just opened in Golden Square, Soho. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. What kind of woman was she? She was a petite, mousy-looking woman, wore her brown hair in a bob, and spoke with a slight South African accent. But for all her sweetness, she was incredibly tough – you crossed her at your peril. She’d been a window dresser in the West End, but back then there was nothing much to show dresses on, just ordinary dummies – lumps of plaster – which looked awful. So she decided to make her own mannequins. Her father was a rabbi, but I don’t think she was a practising Jew. However, when she died she left money to a Sephardic cemetery on the Fulham Road. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion What made her a hero? She was the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. She had the strength of Frida Kahlo and was one of those people who just make things happen. She and her husband started producing their handcrafted mannequins, using the latest fibreglass technology, in a small Soho workshop before moving to bigger premises. She was a great talent-spotter, too – she immediately realised the potential in Twiggy’s elfin look – and could identify a trend before it hit the streets. She also supported me through thick and thin when my business wasn’t doing too well in the early days, even lending me money. She was like an angel – albeit one with claws. What was her finest hour? It has to be the legacy of the amazing mannequins she created that made outfits and dresses just come to life – she transformed the shop windows of the 1970s and 80s. She modelled her mannequins on everyone from Twiggy to Sandie Shaw – even Joan Collins before Dynasty revived her flagging fame. At its peak, Adel’s company employed 200 people, and the factory she set up produced 6,000 mannequins a year, exported worldwide. They are now collectors’ items; if you’re lucky, you can pick up one for £300 – I recently purchased a couple myself on eBay. Read more | Five outrageous moments in royal fashion history Can you see any parallels between her life and your own? We both made our careers in the fashion world, and her strength of character and generosity of spirit helped carry me through the tough times. So I’d like to help ensure that she’s remembered in her own special way. Her death left a great hole in my life. What would you say if you could meet her now? I’d thank her for all she did for me – she was so instrumental in my career, and helped me become what I became. I can never thank her enough. Zandra Rhodes is one of the UK’s leading fashion designers. The paperback of her book Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects (Penguin) is out now This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Fashion and folly | Alice Loxton on the world of the Georgians
In episode five of the World of the Georgians, Alice Loxton explores Georgian fashion, celebrity and excess – and how caricature delighted in cutting vanity down to size
In Georgian Britain, clothing was never just about style – it was a public performance of wealth, status and ambition. In this episode, Alice Loxton examines the extravagant fashions of the 18th century, from towering wigs and vast hoop skirts to the scandalously sheer dresses of the Regency era. She also explores early celebrity culture through figures such as opera singer Elizabeth Billington, whose fame made her a magnet for gossip and, of course, satire. View Green Video on the source website Want more from Alice? Find more episodes of the World of the Georgians. Alice Loxton is a historian, presenter and Sunday Times bestselling author with over three million followers on social media.
How to dress like a ROMAN woman in ancient Britain
What would an elite Roman woman have worn on the frontiers of the empire? Join us at Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire as we recreate an authentic hairstyle and makeup look of a wealthy Roman woman living in Britain from the early fourth century
Join us at Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire, one of Britain's most impressive Roman sites now in the care of the National Trust, as we recreate an authentic hairstyle and makeup look of a wealthy Roman woman living in Britain from the early fourth century. HistoryExtra's Rachel Dinning joins expert Aimee Williams, visitor experience officer at Chedworth, as she transforms our model Emily with intricate braids, bold blue eyeshadow, and traditional Roman attire. Learn about the fascinating and often bizarre beauty rituals of Roman women, from using rotted leeches in red wine as hair dye, to the rituals of ancient cosmetics grinders. View Green Video on the source website
The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
What's going on with the facial hair in King and Conqueror, have we been suckered in by an overly literal understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry, and what did a Viking beard really look like?
How and why did they get the facial hair so wrong in the new BBC 1066 drama King and Conqueror, and what did an actual Viking look like on the hair and beard front? Find out in my in-depth analysis of moustache-gate, framed, as is my wont, in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The new 1066 drama King and Conqueror has been accused by numerous commentators of playing fast and loose with the historical narrative of the Norman Conquest. That’s a reasonable criticism, but on my assessment of the critiques of the series, the deepest opprobrium has been reserved for the facial hair fantasy. Dad tache or bad tache? The problem is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Duke William of Normandy, sports a bristling tache (memorably described by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as a ‘1970s dad tache’ and in the Daily Mail as an Asterix look), while the upper lip of James Norton’s Harold Godwinson is unequivocally hairless. That, as many experts have pointed out, is directly at odds with the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous 11th-century embroidery, which provides the earliest visual representation of the 1066 story, quite clearly shows a moustachioed Harold and a clean-shaven William. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/528361-7b9d210.jpg" width="6224" height="4672" alt="A man with shaggy hair and a moustache stands on a beach, dressed in a dark cloak and holding a sword. Behind him, a small group of people gather around a wooden boat on the shoreline" title="William bosses the beach with his 1970s dad tache in King and Conqueror (Image by BBC/CBS Studios)" /> Harold’s facial hair in the Tapestry is in line with that of his Anglo-Saxon compatriots: they tend to (but don’t always) boast moustaches, some of which are thin and straggly, while others are impressive handlebar efforts. The Normans, on the other hand, lack upper lip action. The embroiderers were clearly following a style guide to try to offer a visual prompt to the viewer about which side the respective figures were on. Menacing reverse mullet It wasn’t just moustaches in the Tapestry that helped viewers to know who was on which team – the haircuts also offered a clue. The Normans often had curious shaved necks, which, in the words of the great Tapestry scholar Professor Gale Owen-Crocker were ‘sometimes accompanied by a menacing lock of hair at the forehead’, or a ‘reverse mullet’ as Dr Thomas Williams has fabulously described it. The English generally had a decidedly less scary bowl-cut bob sort of look going on. This was significant because one of the things with the Bayeux Tapestry is that it doesn’t give you very much information in the captions to describe what’s occurring and who is doing what, so you needed these visual hints to keep up with the story. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-moustach-Harold815687404-ddc875b.jpg" width="3543" height="2753" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a group of men sitting at a high table under a red, yellow and green canopy. Around them, there are animals" title="Anglo-Saxons feasting and drinking with their big Bayeux Tapestry taches (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? Aside from the moustache debacle, King and Conqueror doesn’t, for my money, capture the spirit of the Bayeux Tapestry with the barnets either. Norton’s haircut isn’t quite dorky enough, and Coster-Waldau’s isn’t really as shavenly intimidating as it ought to be. Maybe Luther Ford’s Tostig Godwinson gets closest to a Tapestry look with his bowl-cut (though Tostig himself does not specifically appear in the embroidery, so I’m generalising about the Anglo-Saxon vibe). I haven’t seen any explanation in the crew interviews for the TV series for this obvious diversion from the historical facial hair facts. However, I do note that Norton had originally hoped to play William. His plan, apparently, was scuppered by a contractual obligation with HBO that he could only appear in King and Conqueror if his character died. That legal stipulation ruled out the option of him appearing as the Norman Duke, who does not die at Hastings, and left him little choice but to take on the ill-fated Harold instead, who famously does. So maybe they just forgot who was supposed to grow the tache after that. Manly strength, modernity and bravery I do understand this level of moustache anxiety, particularly in these days of hipster facial hair. I’m reminded of a great HistoryExtra article from the eminent beard historian Dr Alun Withey on moustache matters. He said, “Like many other facial hair styles, the moustache has a long and complicated history. In some periods it has symbolised manly strength, modernity and bravery; in others it was decried as an affectation of fey young men. It’s easy to write facial hair off as something that is quirky or irrelevant, but it often tells us a very great deal about individual men across time, as well as shifting attitudes towards masculinity and the male body.” Having established the importance of facial hair, I’m surprised that not many people have been exercised by the chin of Eddie Marsan’s Edward the Confessor in King and Conqueror. Marsan’s simpering mother-beaten monarch is very different from the Bayeux Tapestry version, because the embroidered king wears a long flowing beard. I know Marsan can grow facial hair because he was bearded in his depiction of noted canoe conman John Darwin in an ITV drama a few years ago, so again, the King and Conqueror team have apparently made a deliberate decision to ignore the evidential pogonotrophy of the Bayeux Tapestry. I can only assume that they figured Marsan with a beard wouldn’t look as weak-willed as they wanted his King Edward to be. Someone who is clearly tooled up to look intimidating in King and Conqueror is the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada, played by Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson. He is resplendent with a big brash beard that Brian Blessed would be proud of. Hardrada’s invasion, accompanied by King Harold’s disaffected brother Tostig, is the preliminary story to the Norman Conquest (and if you want the full story, watch my chat with Marc Morris all about it on the HistoryExtra YouTube channel). Harold’s victory over his brother and the mighty Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge would have been the stuff of legend if it wasn’t overshadowed by his own defeat and death a few days later at the hands of William and the Normans at Hastings. The Tapestry devotes zero attention to the Hardrada story so we cannot say whether the King and Conqueror depiction of a big beardy Viking is accurate. Actual Viking facial hair evidence However, and this is breaking news, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, Peter Pentz, has just published some research on a remarkable Viking period figurine, which gives us a very rare glimpse of what a Viking hair style actually looked like. Granted it’s from the 10th century rather than the 11th, and obviously sartorial trends can move fast, but nevertheless, it’s a good insight. The little figurine, currently on display in the Viking Sorceress exhibition at the museum in Copenhagen, has a middle parting with a side wave that leaves the ear visible, while the hair has been cropped at the back. Plus he’s got a large moustache, a long, braided goatee and sideburns. It’s some look, and according to Peter Pentz, it’s quite a find: “Hitherto, we haven’t had any detailed knowledge about Viking hairstyles, but here, we get all the details – even the little curl above the ear is marked. This is the first time we see a figure of a male Viking with his hair visible from all angles. It’s unique”. Hardrada, in King and Conqueror, isn’t quite aligned with this Viking look, given that he has a full beard rather than tache, goatee and sideburns, but this research has only just come to light, so we can let the producers of the series off on that one at least. Read more | How historically accurate is King and Conqueror? Here’s the real history that should have happened What’s interesting, I think, is to dwell briefly on whether we are reading far too much into these Bayeux Tapestry haircuts and moustache designs. Might perhaps we better assume that the designer and embroiders were simply trying to remind the viewers about who was English and who was Norman, as I mentioned above, and not really be attempting to represent the hairy reality of the day? As the noted scholar of Old English Dr Thijs Porck pointed out in this excellent blog post a few years ago, the early 11th-century Anglo-Saxon religious writer, Ælfric of Eynsham, had cause to write a letter of complaint, admonishing his fellow monks for adorning themselves ‘in Danish fashion, with bared neck and blinded eyes’. That shaved back of neck and hair flopping over the eyes sounds quite a lot like the Norman look in the Bayeux Tapestry, and not dissimilar to what we can see in the Viking figurine. So maybe both the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were trying to look scarily Viking in the 11th century, and the Tapestry has slipped us a red herring by making out that the two groups adopted different hair styles. Maybe moustache-gate is simply an overly-literal reading of the embroidery. As Marc Morris has noted, however, there is other documentary evidence besides the Tapestry to suggest that there were stylistic differences in hair and face between Normans and English. William of Poitiers recorded how the French and Normans 'looked with curiosity' at the long-haired English hostages that the Conqueror brought home with him in 1067, and other sources do point to the Normans being clean-shaven and the English wearing facial hair. One final point on faces, moustaches and hair is this: quoting Professor Owen-Crocker once more, ‘No-one ever looks happy in the Bayeux Tapestry’. The range of facial expressions in the embroidery are limited, though Harold does look notably downtrodden when he’s making his famous oath in the presence of Duke William in Bayeux. So, if we’re being picky about facial hair and divergence from the Tapestry, we ought also to criticise King and Conqueror for allowing its characters to smile on occasion, because that really isn’t in the spirit of the embroidery. If you want to know more about the Bayeux Tapestry, feel free to have a scan of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Bayeux-Tapestry-Unravelling-Conquest/dp/0500297657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36VNPUZVD7AT0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MMpoBk9Uovbmr3TEL7v4h5yCcHHB7TibT_bIrEGBOBxY2Pe3qyULcF9azzUe6FSS77dBGNHt1jXTxYq4ZklhYwbTl0vPLrwYXklZE3_uXH7g1YMSgVfU06y_VHZZkn57MW1kw48WMMOmwhS-d_wuHIBjqgzxJOdyiDL2g6zJrYe7mf3Joj6Mhuu-i1x8EDFrhQ6EEihQAOCndaf5Z0YMQXFMhbJ8bz6lOmHeW7nnRG8.LiqZZPaTMKhqXNti1OiwZBLnizdALx5kanimdfEvyVM&dib_tag=se&keywords=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry&qid=1756389351&s=books&sprefix=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-288879" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by myself and Professor Michael Lewis. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
In the interwar era, artists and designers embraced a sleek modern style that embodied the optimism and elegance of the age. On the centenary of the Paris expo that launched Art Deco on the international stage, Emma Bastin explores its origins and lasting impacts
On a cold, wintry December day in 1935, the Duke and Duchess of York arrived in Bexhill-on-Sea to open a new public venue. Lining the route were well-wishers of all ages, from Brownies and Cubs to war veterans wearing campaign medals. By the time the royal couple reached their destination, the crowd numbered in their thousands; no doubt the duke and duchess found it difficult to fully appreciate the building. With its unadorned cream walls, acres of glass and sleek lines, the De La Warr Pavilion did not so much proclaim its modernity but shout it out loud. The stylish façade hid a welded steel frame, the first of its kind in Britain. Inside were an auditorium seating 1,300, a restaurant and a library, all for “the common enjoyment of the people”. Quickly dubbed ‘The People’s Palace’, it was – and still is – an iconic embodiment of Art Deco style. Art Deco – a shortened, anglicised version of arts décoratifs – was never referred to as such in its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. Like most art movements, it gained its name long after its popularity had waned. The first use of the term as we use it now was by art historian Bevis Hillier in 1968. Facade of the Folies Bergère, Paris Maurice Pico, 1926 The dancer Lila Nikolska was the model for the gold bas-relief facade of the most famous cabaret in Paris – the Folies Bergère. Dancers were important to Art Deco sculptors, their bodies epitomising fluidity and strength. Here, movement is emphasised by the sequences of lines that surround the model, which also suggest that strident, modern music is playing. As with many other forms of art and design before and since, Art Deco was a response to the social, cultural and economic climate in which it emerged. It drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources, from ancient Egypt to the avant-garde, incorporating motifs from nature as well as concepts of mass-production using artificial materials. As a result, defining Art Deco is notoriously difficult. Some art historians have proposed that, rather than seeing it as a style, we should view Art Deco as a celebration of the imagination and creativity of the interwar years. Yet there is something distinctive and recognisable about its character. The form of an Art Deco object is usually simplified, often incorporating geometric shapes; functionality is important. Decorative features are stripped back to the essentials, but popular motifs include chevrons, sunrays, plants and human figures. Century of style By the time the De La Warr Pavilion was opened, the style had been growing in prominence for more than a decade. For many historians and enthusiasts, 2025 is being celebrated as the centenary year of Art Deco. That was the year when L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (usually loosely translated as the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts) was held in Paris. The organisers had declared that exhibits must show “modern inspiration and a real originality”, and the expo brought together the best in contemporary design from around the world. Vogue cover Pierre Mourgue, 1930 As the foremost fashion magazine in the US, Britain and France, Vogue led the way with stylish, avant-garde cover illustrations produced by a talented roster of artists. Pierre Mourgue, one of several artists Condé Nast discovered in France, relocated to the US where he produced several covers for Vogue. This example from 1930 exudes elegance, shows off the latest fashions, and references the modern skyscrapers springing up in New York City in that era. However, the roots of Art Deco date from as early as the 1910s, when French artists began to move away from the intricate detailing of Art Nouveau and towards a simpler style. Luxury French fashion magazines like Gazette du Bon Ton and Femina commissioned artists including Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape to illustrate the latest avant-garde fashions by couturiers such as Paul Poiret. Outside of France, there were moves towards simplified architecture by Austrian Josef Hoffmann and Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Styles of modern art that developed in the years before the First World War, such as Cubism, Vorticism and Futurism also influenced Art Deco style. Unsurprisingly, advances in art and design were temporarily halted during the war but quickly leapt forward in the following years, driven largely by the desire to forget – to make a break with what had gone before – and for modernity. Read more | Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art Seven years after the end of the war, the 1925 Paris expo established Art Deco as a mainstream style. Some 16 million visitors passed through its doors in the seven months it was open – importantly, that included tastemakers, buyers, designers and journalists from around the world. Articles in the press raved about the “dream city” that had been created with temporary pavilions. The impermanent nature of these buildings, along with the expectation that the style should emphasise the modern, inspired architects to produce groundbreaking designs. Postcards and photographs showed off the astonishing assembly of buildings to a global audience. For those present, elaborate arrangements of searchlights illuminated the pavilions and grounds at night, and extraordinary sights – such as a 15-metre-tall crystal fountain by jewellery designer René Lalique – enhanced this vision of modernity. Ekco A76 radio c1934 In the 1930s, Ekco radios combined innovative design with the latest technology; today, they’re highly sought after by collectors. Radio ownership boomed in the interwar years, when the use of Bakelite (an early plastic) allowed Ekco to create alternatives to earlier square wooden cases. Well-known architects and designers such as Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates were commissioned to create new ranges, introducing Art Deco design into homes across the nation. Conspicuous consumption The Paris expo hosted 15,000 exhibitors, many of which were businesses promoting themselves and selling their wares. The organisers wanted to showcase design not just in terms of production but also consumption. Large department stores such as Galeries Lafayette occupied their own pavilions, and luxury boutiques lined the Pont Alexandre III across the Seine. The French wanted to highlight the skills of their artists, and a model French embassy was created in which sumptuous interiors and furnishings were displayed. This was Art Deco for the elite, not the masses, designed to appeal to those with deep pockets. But in an age when trends percolated down, many of the designers fully expected that the style they had developed would be taken up by the lower classes, albeit at a later date and in more economical forms. Mass consumerism, faster communications and new technologies enabled Art Deco to spread both widely and rapidly. Thanks to the variety of ways in which this style could be applied, it appeared in myriad forms – one of the most imposing and widely visible being architecture. London Underground poster Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1931 Inspired by Futurism, this ultra-modern poster was seen by hundreds of thousands of travellers in the early 1930s, when such a combination of image and text was still a novelty. One of the boldest artists commissioned by London Transport, McKnight Kauffer – who used an airbrush to create the 3D effect on the numbers 6 and 12 – was also one of the most prolific, producing nearly 100 posters. Businesses keen to show their inventiveness employed forward-looking architects to create factories and headquarters in the most modern style. Along the Great West Road in London, an array of cutting-edge buildings sprang up, among them modern factories for Firestone, Gillette and Coty cosmetics. The Hoover Building was erected in Perivale, and the Oxo Tower on the south bank of the Thames in central London. Outside the capital, Littlewoods built a vast modern headquarters in Liverpool, and Scotland welcomed Art Deco buildings such as India of Inchinnan, and Luma Tower in Glasgow. Retailers also realised the commercial potential of Art Deco: the simple lines and large areas of glazing allowed their products to shine. Burton and Marks and Spencer both favoured an Art Deco-inspired neoclassicism, with grand pillars and repeated motifs. Their buildings can still be seen today on high streets in towns and cities such as London, York, Halifax and Swansea. Read more | Michael Wood on the New Angel | "Few works of 20th-century art have such a distinguished list of past owners" The streamlined style of Art Deco was perfect for railway stations and airports, too, its sleek lines evoking speed and efficiency, and its wide open spaces accommodating large numbers of passengers. Dozens of Art Deco tube stations built in suburban London in the 1920s and 1930s were designed by Charles Holden, who enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Frank Pick, the man who modernised and united the London Transport network. Together they created a unified look for stations and their interiors across the network. Often beacons of modernity in a land of mock-Tudor semis, their stations welcomed hundreds of thousands of passengers every day in places such as Acton Town, Cockfosters and East Finchley, which is still guarded by Eric Aumonier’s Art Deco Archer statue. Group of Four Nudes Tamara de Lempicka, 1925 This Polish-born artist’s work is instantly recognisable, pushing boundaries of style and subject. This painting blends Cubism with the traditional: bodies are drawn in strong, angular lines, but beautifully toned shading and colours give a sense of depth. Intensely erotic, it was deemed shocking at the time. Picture palaces Cinema proved to be a potent force in the spread of Art Deco. The explosion in movie-going fuelled demand for a large number of new venues, many of which were built in the latest style. From their gleaming white exteriors to their modern foyers and plush interiors, cinemas allowed the audience to lose themselves in fantasy for a few hours. It was not only the cinema buildings that were Art Deco: the films themselves were also heavily influenced by the movement. From the 1920s, the industry led the way in fusing modernity and glamour. Hollywood art director Cedric Gibbons, who visited the 1925 expo, became the master of Art Deco styling in films. The MGM movies on which he worked in the interwar period showcased his vision of heightened luxury and elegance, particularly his interior sets, such as those in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Grand Hotel (1932). In the 1930s, musicals developed the ‘Gibbons look’, and vast Art Deco sets with high ceilings, repeated motifs and sweeping lines were created for films like Top Hat (1935). Hollywood shared this glossy style with a global audience of around 80 million people each week, helping to create consumers with aspirations to live like their favourite movie stars. Eltham Palace entrance hall Rolf Engströmer, 1936 When Stephen and Virginia Courtauld added an Art Deco extension to the existing medieval hall of Eltham Palace, south-east London, Swedish designer Rolf Engströmer was commissioned to create the circular entrance hall. Natural light floods through the domed glass roof to illuminate exquisite marquetry walls, modern furniture and a rug designed by textile artist Marion Dorn. Modernity prevailed throughout the new section of the house, which boasted underfloor heating, multi-room sound systems and a centralised vacuum cleaner. Need for speed Beyond the cinema, Art Deco adorned advertising boards, magazines and newspapers. Graphic designers embraced the new style, recognising that simplicity and ease of reading were essential for capturing the public’s attention; French poster designer Paul Colin noted that the best advertising “must be readable at 100km an hour”. The intricate drawings and acres of text found in Victorian and Edwardian adverts were swept away, replaced with striking, pared-back visuals creating an efficient and dynamic look. Frank Pick at London Transport advocated this modern look, commissioning commercial artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer, André Édouard Marty and Dora M Batty to create posters displayed across the transport network. Like movies, these posters had a huge audience, and the public soon became familiar with this modern style – consciously or not. Seeing the success of the London Transport posters, other businesses began to use Art Deco in their own marketing material. Railway companies and shipping lines produced some of the most iconic advertising, but this new form of graphic design was also used to market clothing, make-up, cars, food – almost anything, in fact. Manufacturers quickly realised that Art Deco was a style that could easily be reproduced en masse. Its simplicity of form and design allowed objects such as radios, telephones, mirrors, china and printed fabrics to be created easily, often using mass-production techniques. There was a ready market for these goods, too – the number of people with disposable incomes was growing, and products that offered a sense of modernity along with ease of living were in demand. Cartier brooch c1925 Art Deco jewellery was dazzling – and no one created dazzle quite like Cartier. This brooch has a jadeite background showcasing diamonds and sapphires set in a geometric design. Jade had long been used in the far east, and this brooch demonstrates how inspiration from other cultures was mixed with modernity to create a brand new style. In Britain, geometric clocks and photo frames appeared on mantlepieces, as did brightly coloured ornaments. Potteries employed forward-thinking artists such as Clarice Cliff to decorate their tableware, and furniture became more streamlined. Even those on limited incomes could buy into the look: Littlewoods offered Art Deco tea sets, electric light pendants and dressing-table trinkets for as little as 10 shillings, payable in instalments. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion Reclaiming the past The heyday of Art Deco ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. Quickly, utility and practicality replaced consumerism and design. The style was largely relegated to the doldrums during the reign of stark Modernism and Brutalism in the 1950s and early 1960s, but by 1965 a tentative revival had begun. The 1920s and 1930s represented a period before the living memory of younger members of society but, in their desire for self-expression, they looked to the interwar era as a golden age of individualism, youth and newly liberated sexuality. This interest was fuelled by the emergence of design studies, and the idea that Art Deco could not be simply dismissed as commercialised and lightweight. Exhibitions were staged, and books and articles were written on the subject. Fashion designers and retailers such as Biba took the glamour of Art Deco and reinterpreted it for a new audience. Postmodernism and pop art borrowed the bright colours, geometrics and fun to break with the austerity of postwar Modernism, and original Art Deco items became sought after by collectors. Chrysler Building, New York City William Van Alen, 1930 When completed, the Chrysler Building was the world’s first supertall skyscraper – the loftiest building in the world, soaring 319 metres into the New York City sky. It’s an Art Deco icon, largely due to its terraced ‘crown’ featuring concentric arches and radiating sunbursts. Typical of the style, ornamentation is exuberant – stylised hub caps, oversized Chrysler hood ornaments and radiator caps all reference the source of the wealth that underwrote this building: making and selling cars. The centenary of the Paris expo has sparked another resurgence of interest, as designers look to the past for inspiration. There are efforts to preserve Art Deco heritage around the world, and celebrations and exhibitions celebrating the innovations it made. Art Deco has proved to be timeless. Its sleek aesthetic transcends shifts in fashions, and the glamour and luxury it epitomises remain desirable. It changed the way we view art and design: no longer the preserve of the rich and urbane, mass produced objects were beautiful, fun and functional, accessible to all. Today, the ideal of Art Deco – melding beauty with utility – remains a guiding principle in design and its consumption. Dr Emma Bastin is a historian of the early 20th century, particularly focusing on the interwar period. She explores material and cultural history, including fashion and retail This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Zoot suits, mashers & New Romantics: the evolution of the dandy
Peter Andersson delves into various dandy subcultures that saw men dressing immaculately, from the early 19th century to the 1980s
From zoot suiters and mods, to mashers and Congolese sapeurs, since the early 19th century, fashionable male subcultures have popped up across the globe. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Peter Andersson examines how the idea of the 'dandy' has evolved over time, and argues that the idea of dressing well was not limited to the elites. Peter Andersson is the author of The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2025) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=historyextra-288194&awinmid=3787&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fthe-dandy%2Fpeter-k-andersson%2F9780198882435%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%2520Dandy%253A%2520A%2520People%27s%2520History%2520constitutes%2520the%2520first%2520ever%2520history%2Cstyle%252Dconscious%2520men%2520about%2520town.#:~:text=The%20Dandy%3A%20A%20People's%20History%20constitutes%20the%20first%20ever%20history,style%2Dconscious%20men%20about%20town." rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Waterstones
Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women
Few 17th-century women could travel the world. But the world could visit them in their gardens. Susannah Lyon-Whaley reveals how exotic plants – from Chinese rhubarb to South American passionfruit – opened new horizons in fashion, food and science
Anna Buckett had never seen a pineapple. Undeterred, on 12 July 1656, she took the bold move of stitching one. While the fine stitches on her sampler show dexterity, the result is more artistic than realistic. The red pineapple looks a little like a monstrous jelly with beetle legs. Amid Anna’s stitched pinks, pansies and honeysuckles, the pineapple – a native of countries like Brazil and Suriname that would not grow successfully in English gardens until the 1700s – was out of place. She had never seen a pineapple, but Anna may have seen pictures. The first printed depiction of a pineapple in Europe was in black and white in Gonzalo de Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias (1535). Another herbal text (1641) claimed that the fruit tasted “as if wine, rosewater and sugar were mixed together”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2HHR700cmyk-ce191d2.jpg" width="1545" height="1030" alt="A detailed and colourful piece of needlework shows a scene with two people, a lion and a horse at the top, with several plants, leaves and red pineapples across the bottom" title="A needlework sampler stitched by Anna Buckett in 1656, including her depiction of a red pineapple, resembling a “monstrous jelly with beetle legs” (Image by Alamy)" /> Anna may have been the Anne Buckett baptised in May 1643 in Middlesex, or the Ann Becket baptised in December 1644 in Surrey, though neither is certain. Like other daughters of merchants or gentlemen learning the gentler arts, she stitched both gardens she saw and those she imagined. Needlework creations of the time swarmed with peacocks, parrots, lions, leopards and sunflowers from foreign lands. In the 17th century, voyages to new colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and India turned plants like tobacco and sugarcane into profits. They also sent waves of plants rippling back across the sea. For women at home, gardens made the wider world a material reality. Dainties for a queen In 1629, John Parkinson, royal herbalist to Charles I, dedicated his new book of flowers, Paradisi in Sole, to the king’s wife, 20-year-old French-born Henrietta Maria. “Knowing your maiestie so much delighted with all the faire flowers of a garden,” the work “seemed as it were destined, to bee first offered into your highnesse hands.” The more exotic and ‘outlandish’ a flower, the more fashionable. The potatoes of Canada with their small yellow blooms, wrote Parkinson, were once stewed with butter and wine as “dainties for a queene”. But by 1629 these were “growne to be so common here with us at London, that even the most vulgar begin to despise them”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1130662874cmyk-fb05112.jpg" width="3226" height="2149" alt="A black and white sketch of several intertwining plants" title="A page from Paradisi in Sole, John Parkinson’s 1629 book of flowers dedicated to Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. Parkinson urged elite women to smell and taste the blooms in their gardens" /> Paradisi in Sole was a gateway to further knowledge for ‘gentlewomen’, and Parkinson urged such women to look, smell and taste in their own domestic gardens. The crown imperial from Constantinople “doe smell somewhat strong as it were the savour of a Foxe”. Tulip bulbs tasted like “sweete onions”. The West Indian “daffodil with a red flower” was “by the Indians in their tongue named Azcal Xochitl”. Flowers introduced new smellscapes as well as sights. The scent of orange flowers – originally grown in China – in perfumed waters was favoured by ladies and queens, even if the orange fruit could be sold in playhouses by girls of dubious reputation. In a Dutch still life painting by Pieter Claesz dated 1627, a dead turkey baked into a pie clutches a sprig of orange blossom in its beak. On a table set with Chinese porcelain, a Pacific nautilus shell and Indian spices, the blossom is just one of many exotica. Sweet-smelling nasturtiums from the West Indies decked small bunches that a woman might present to a friend or receive from a lover. Blooms like jasmine, orange blossom and the delicate white flowers of the Mexican tuberose perfumed women from princesses to sex workers. A satire on a lady’s dressing room by Mary Evelyn in 1690 described gloves scented with such fragrances. In the poem Pendragon, or, The Carpet Knight his Kalendar (1698), the knight follows Selena to church, only to be overwhelmed by “a whiff of tuberose” emanating from “her skin or clothes”. A scent bottle from the Cheapside hoard of Elizabethan and Stuart jewels, found in London in 1912, is encrusted with enamel, gold and gems. Other bottles engraved with oriental-style birds and plants attested to the value of the smells they contained. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/HR2E2Tcmyk-8d05622.jpg" width="1754" height="1168" alt="A painting shows to women in dresses, with curly hair. The woman on the left wears a pearl necklace. The one on the right is holding a painting of a tulip" title="A portrait of Mary Capel (left) with her sister Elizabeth (holding a painting of a tulip). Mary was reportedly responsible for the introduction of 87 new plants into England" /> Like Anna’s pineapple, flowers were sources of artistic inspiration and invited readers to picture foreign places. Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon, holds her own painting of a tulip, also known as a ‘Turk’s cap’, in a portrait with her sister Mary Capel, later Duchess of Beaufort. For Mary, flowers were a scientific passion. Plants put her in touch with botanists like Hans Sloane and opened her mind to places she could only read of: the West Indies, China, Japan and Ceylon. Mary kept books of the plants she grew and collected, along with notes including their indigenous names. Among her pressed flowers at the Natural History Museum is a desiccated South American passionfruit “ripen’d at Fairford in Gloucestershire”. As a woman, Mary could not join the Royal Society, the premier organisation for the study of natural history, nor publish work in her name. Yet, in the century of her death it was reported that she was responsible for the introduction of 87 new plants, among them Virginian blush flowered speedwell and Persian bell flowered gigantic swallow wort. One hundred years after she died, botanist Robert Brown named the Western Australian gravel bottlebrush after her: Beaufortia Decussata. Prickly fig trees But not only duchesses took an interest in botany. “Mistresse Thomasin Tunstall” lived in rural Bull Bank in Lancashire, 5 miles north of Hornby Castle, far from noble courts. Tunstall collected rare native plants like the cuckoo flower and lady slipper orchid. Parkinson noted that she “hath often sent mee up the rootes to London, which have borne faire flowers in my garden”. The marginal notes in Tunstall’s copy of botanist John Gerard’s famous ‘herbal’ show her awareness of plants from the wider world. Tunstall noted that Gerard’s “Prickly Indian Fig tree” grew at “Mr Parkinson’s gardin at the siyne of the goulden morter on Ludyat Hill”. Women worked with these plants – as well as studied and collected them. A bill from the 1680s for Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II, offers rare evidence of women’s garden labour. Weeders worked among the queen’s sweet-scented tuberoses, Ethiopian bladder senna, purple Virginian honeysuckle, and apios americana sourced from the keeper of the Chelsea Physic Garden. At least one found love amid the blooms. On 19 August 1688, Katherine Griffin married Thomas Williams – one of the queen’s garden labourers – at the Holy Trinity in Knightsbridge and is subsequently listed with the weeding women as Katherine Williams. Despite being paid 10p a day or £1 a month (roughly £120 today), half as much as the male gardeners whose names are recorded in the same bills, women like Katherine were adept at their tasks. The “garden of pleasure stored with these out-landish flowers… needeth not so much or so often manuring with soyle, as another garden planted with… English flowers,” John Parkinson had written in Paradisi in Sole. But it did “neede to bee well cleansed from all annoyances… stones, weedes, rootes of trees, bushes”. A weeding woman had to know which seedlings to pull. What might she have thought of the unusual plants she was required to treat like “so many jewels”? Such work did not go unnoticed. The young noblewoman Celia Fiennes described a statue of an “old weeder woman” in the Duke of Bedford’s cherry garden that was “done so like and her clothes so well that at first I tooke it to be a real living body”. A Mortlake tapestry pictures a woman weeding. Her clothes, which are not as rich as those worn by a nearby noble couple, suggest she might be the gardener’s wife. The daffodils growing beside her were new additions to the decorative garden under names such as ‘Narcissus Africanus’, the French daffodil, and the ‘Daffodill of Constantinople’. Shining like diamonds In the garden of pleasure and the adjoining kitchen garden, North American tobacco with its pretty pink flowers became a salve for ulcers and wounds, or a syrup to treat asthma. Manuscript books of recipes compiled by women include “pellitory of Spayne” (likely the North African Anacyclus pyrethrum) in a gargle for phlegm and rhubarb from China in laxatives. Widely read printed recipes called for sugar, the crystallised product of the juice from the sugar cane plant. With its fine white powder, a lady or her maidservant could transform English roses, borage, marigolds or gillyflowers into “candie hard and glistering like diamonds”. A humbler conserve of native betony flowers and foreign sugar purporting to aid conception instructed its maker to boil “betony new and tender one pound, the best sugar three pound” until they became a syrup. At the start of the 17th century, sugar was a luxury product. But by the end of the century, plantations established in British colonies like Barbados meant sugar was affordable for the likes of yeoman farmers and their wives. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/15-Ladies-Directory-Af-d.45-titlepagecmyk-c46872d.jpg" width="1104" height="735" alt="An old double page from a book shows an illustration of a woman making syrup on the left, and on the right, a page titled THE LADIES DIRECTORY IN CHOICE EXPERIMENTS AND CURIOSITES OF PRESERVING IN JELLIES AND CANDYING BOTH FRUITS & FLOWERS" title="The Ladies Directory of “experiments and curiosities” from 1662 offers women advice on producing drinks, jellies, candied flowers and cakes" /> But ‘exotic’ flowers had a darker side. To source specimens, English women relied on imperial trade routes. The Duchess of Beaufort had trees, cuttings and saplings transported from Barbados. One of the ships that transported “poyson trees” for her in 1696 returned to the island in 1702 carrying enslaved people as cargo. Some gentlewomen may have read Richard Ligon’s A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657), written to attract sugar planters to the colony. He wrote of a new vegetable root “of which the negres brought the seeds” that was “very good meat” for sea voyages, “boyl’d with powdred pork, and eaten with butter, vinegar, and pepper”. Other pages detailed tortures to keep the enslaved African population in check. How much did women of the time know about their impact on ecologies and people far away? It is difficult to guess. Today, flowers imported to the UK from markets such as Kenya are plagued by instances of modern-day slavery. Are those of us who admire and purchase these travelling beauties, these innocent-looking roses, plastic-wrapped and transported thousands of miles on planes, so different from early modern women? Few 17th-century English women may have travelled the high seas to foreign climes but many, particularly the educated and wealthy, experienced the wider world through nature’s bounty. As plants shaped their view of foreign shores, they in turn made these plants into something new. In their gardens, foreign flowers were moulded into emblems of fashion and art, and exotic plants became perfumes, medicine and food. When the young Anna Buckett stitched a pineapple, the curious mind of this ordinary girl was encountering a world miles away from her English pinks and pansies. Or was it? Through books or word of mouth, pineapples had entered her own experience. Susannah Lyon-Whaley is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of York This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why did Georgian dresses cost as much as a townhouse?!
HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch
Could you call a dress radical? The rise of the 18th-century mantua certainly marked a societal shift that went well beyond a fashion trend. As the popularity of this style grew, so too did the role of women in an industry previously dominated by men. Forget tailors – if you wanted to keep up with the Georgians, the mantua maker is where you’d go. To find out more about this generation of trend-setting women, HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch. View Green Video on the source website
Bear fat, false rumps and arsenic makeup: 7 of the most bizarre beauty trends from the past
Ideas about beauty change all the time and, over the years, British women have done strange things to achieve a desired look. Here Margarette Lincoln explores some bizarre beauty rituals from the past 400 years, from larding hair with bear fat to eating arsenic
Personal appearance is linked to power, status, and self-identity so women have always tried to look their best. Before makeup and toiletries became mega industries, beauty products were limited, and women resorted to inventions that seem truly weird today… Hair looking lacklustre? Try bear fat For centuries, bear fat was touted to promote hair growth. Cleopatra is said to have been an early fan. Bears have strong, thick coats, so people reasoned that their fat would make tresses luxuriant – and even prevent hair loss. Britain imported tons of bear fat from France each year. Russian bears were thought to yield the best. The fat was refined, mixed with beef marrow, and then perfumed to make ‘Bear’s Grease’. But the genuine article was in short supply, so was routinely adulterated with pig fat or lard. To prevent doubt, canny retailers proudly invited customers to view the fat cut from recently slaughtered bears. In the 1790s, Reeves’s Perfumery Warehouse and Ornamental Hair Manufactory, based in Holborn, London advertised that it killed one bear each month for the purpose. Bear’s Grease was also used in pomade, the waxy substance used to keep hair in place. Persian Rose Pomatum, for instance, claimed to be made from “clarified Bear’s Grease, Buffalo’s Marrow, and Odour of Roses”. Such products attracted hungry pests, as did the powder used to bulk up a hairstyle. One 18th-century woman recalled seeing a mouse peep out of the curls of a lady in front of her at church, “no doubt well fed with so much powder and pomatum”. Women combated such unwelcome pests in their hair with head-scratchers and carefully placed flea traps (tiny boxes filled with blood and glue). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/01/GettyImages-90743543-e8f3323.jpg" width="734" height="1024" alt="UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 31: Vignette from a lithographic plate showing a shop exterior and a sign advertising 'Bear�s Grease' which was supposed to stimulate the growth of hair. Taken from 'The Bear' in 'Graphic Illustrations of Animals - Showing Their Utility to Man', a book illustrated by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and R K Thomas, printed by J Graf, C Graf, Day and Haghe, and published by Thomas Varty. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="Perfumer, c 1845." /> Does my bum look big (enough)? Try a false rump In the 1780s, billowy muslin dresses with a sash at the waist were all the rage. Women wore pads around their hips to froth out the expensive white muslin and achieve a soft, rounded silhouette. The effect was meant to look natural but was artfully contrived. The hip pads were called rumps. False rumps came in different sizes and were usually stuffed with cork fragments and horsehair. Versions could be made at home, but many were sold in rump shops, irreverently termed ‘bum shops’. Some false rumps were shaped like buttocks, split with a gap in the middle, which only invited prurient curiosity about how the effect was achieved. This preposterous fashion was heavily mocked in the satirical prints of the day, which routinely depicted male shop assistants fawning over female customers, helping them to choose the most flattering rump for their height. On the plus side, whenever a woman sat down, this newfangled fashion always provided a plush cushion. Fancy a pearly smile? Try a teeth transplant Many people in the past had decayed and missing teeth due to sugar consumption and poor dental hygiene. The term ‘dentist’, borrowed from the French, was first used in London around the mid-18th century – but amazingly there was no register of approved dentists in Britain until 1879. Sets of false teeth were made of ivory, walrus tusk or even human teeth, retrieved from graves and battlefields. But these dentures were merely cosmetic. People took them out before meals because you couldn’t chew with them. Instead, some used a masticator – an instrument like a pair of pliers – to grind food up before swallowing. Those who could afford the cost might have opted for ‘transplanted’ teeth. A dentist would pull healthy teeth from a patient in need of money and pop a ‘live’ tooth straight into the mouth of the recipient. Donors were often children because small teeth were easier to fit, and front teeth were preferred because they had a single root and were more likely to ‘take’. All understood that donors could pass on diseases like syphilis; unlike the human teeth used in dentures, extracted teeth could not be boiled before use. Despite the risk, transplantation remained popular with women on both sides of Atlantic into the 19th century, which shows how desperate they were to have good teeth. But successful transplantation was always a matter of chance. Longing for smooth skin? Try veal – or a ‘toilet mask’ The secret to a velvety complexion was once believed to have been veal. A 17th-century household manual advised women to boil a piece of veal without skin or fat in a quart of water. Then they had to strain the mixture and add a few spoonsful of wine. When cool, it was used as a face wash. As late as the 1880s, a society courtesan still insisted that veal was better than any cold cream which, she said, encouraged hairs to grow. For a wrinkle-free complexion, women were encouraged to go to bed with a piece of raw veal on each cheek, strapped in place with linen bandages. The veal was thought to preserve the freshness of the skin. It was around this time that ‘toilet masks’ – also known as ‘face gloves’– grew in popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. These reusable face masks – which some might considered to be a predecessor to modern sheet masks – were used to moisturise, lubricate and even bleach skin. While they looked rather unsightly, toilet masks had the benefit of being reasonably cheap and long lasting – and wearers could add ointments and creams if they desired. Presumably – given their odd appearance – they were worn on nights when women planned to sleep alone. Madam Rowley’s mask, patented in 1875, was made of flexible rubber and intended to be worn during sleep three times a week. It marketed itself as being guaranteed to remove all “complexional imperfections”, either through perspiration or because medical ointments could be spread on the inside. Can’t find a diet that works? Eat more meat Need to lose weight? Eat meat four times a day! At first, women were not credited with the self-discipline needed to restrict their food intake and lose weight. Dieting was a male preserve. It indicated manly self-control, respectable ambition, and a patriotic desire to be a useful citizen. The first weight loss diet to catch on in Britain and the United States was William Banting’s diet of 1863. It was heavy on red meat and claret, which were associated with masculinity. In any case, the ideal Victorian woman was well rounded, with ‘meagre’ women being advised to pour olive oil over each meal. Even so, towards the end of the 19th century, female activists began to adopt Banting’s ‘meat diet’ as they pushed for equality and the right to vote. They hoped that overt control of their bodies would signal their ability to take a more active role in society. But this diet was expensive, and few could afford so much meat. Yet women were soon expected to be athletic and lean like their male counterparts. By the mid-1920s, the pressure to be extremely slim spawned an inventive range of quack products, including the Vaco Reducing Cup for a protruding abdomen. This suction cup was guaranteed to loosen the congestion of fat and make it vanish. Wealthy women even could buy a portable electric ‘Health Motor’ which vibrated a wide belt around hips or thighs, allegedly sloughing off inches with no need for actual exercise. Looking for a smoother complexion? Try makeup (at your peril!) Women had to fight for the right to wear makeup, which had often been associated with deception and sex work. Tinted lip salves could be made using any red dye. A popular 18th-century guide contained recipes for making lip cream from dyer’s alkanet and white wax, or roses and hog lard, a distinct improvement on 17th-century advice to blend the dye with sweat from behind the ears. Eyebrows could be rubbed with burnt cork. Yet many cosmetics were dangerous with long use. White makeup was made from lead or bismuth compounds – known to be corrosive; safer alternatives included starch or burnt bones. White lead in particular prompted the typical effects of lead poisoning: abdominal pain, muscle weakness, tingling in the hands and feet, and memory problems. It could damage and blacken the skin, and make hair fall out. Mercury-based red pigments meanwhile resulted in tooth loss and stinking breath. Such dangers encouraged Victorian women to revert to making lip salves, pastes, and healthy skin washes at home. Before the 20th century, fear of being poisoned remained perhaps the greatest barrier to everyday cosmetic use. Looking for a youthful glow? Try consumptive chic Tuberculosis was deadly, but its symptoms were widely admired: pale skin accentuated the veins, and feverish eyes sparkled. In the Victorian era, some white women danced with death by eating arsenic for a youthful pallor. Branded arsenic wafers (pills) and arsenical lotions to remove blemishes were openly marketed. They worked by poisoning the blood so that it carried fewer red blood cells to organs; anaemia then left the skin clear and pale. Skin damage by these means was so commonplace that specific washes were developed to whiten and heal complexions that had been yellowed and corroded by arsenic and other toxins. From the end of the 18th century, there was a market for creams guaranteed to be poison-free, but that didn’t stop women taking arsenic for the transparent-looking skin they desired. The body can tolerate a little arsenic. Though, when men died in mysterious circumstances, their wives were sometimes suspected of feeding them large quantities. The crime was hard to prove, but in one notorious case an American woman, Florence Maybrick, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1889 for murdering her husband with arsenic. Only an element of reasonable doubt saved her from being hanged. This scandal epitomises the suspicion and distrust that has long surrounded women’s beauty practices. Margarette Lincoln is the author of Perfection: 400 Years of Women’s Quest for Beauty (Yale, 2024). You can find her on Bluesky @margarettel.bsky.social and Instagram or visit her website