If humanity someday the inhibitory of time, the Victorian era, no doubt, will be one of the popular directions of chronotourism. There are many people who wish to feel like a real sophisticated lady, wander through the streets of London, encounter in secular living rooms with Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde.
We in the ADME.RU also would not refuse to return to the past briefly, but they would never agree to live in the Victorian Epoch day. We think you will agree with us when you look, with which I had to face even a simple woman, and a lady from the highest society.
How to dress a real lady
In the pictures and photographs of the ladies of the Victorian era look sophisticated fairy, and it is difficult to imagine how many layers of clothing on them. You needed to wear shirt daily, corset, garters, pantalonons, another shirt, possibly chinoline and only then dress with a bodice and a pile of the lower skirts. At the same time, the corset had to be tightened so that the waist squeezed with rigid plates was no more than 50 cm. If you were going to get out of the house, there should be put on your legs to put on the middle of the caviar. To fasten them to numerous butchers, a special hook was required. And do not forget about gloves, which were often 2 sizes less than you need, so that the handle looks thin and tender. Evening gloves, to the elbow, were also equipped with a number of tight butchers, to carry with which the maid could have been 20 minutes.
Dressed? Go will be changeable
Only the low-cost representatives could afford to spend the day in the same outfit. Ladies from society, following etiquette, changed the dresses several times on the day. Morning needed to spend in "home", suitable for conversations with servants and guests. It was a dress simple design, but multi-layered and with a complex design. For a walk and for shopping campaigns required a dress with a shorter skirt and from expensive fabric. Do not forget about dresses for visits, evening and ballroom toilets. To relax in the village or walks on the yacht, for traveling and hiking to church also needed special outfits, different from each other.
It was not easy to undress
The corset could not be removed, just unbuttoning the hooks or pulling the lace. If you do it sharply, a head can be cleaned from a sudden tide. The ladies were forced to get rid of this detail of the wardrobe very carefully - first only slightly weakening the tension and only then giving the body freedom. Any hurry could lead to loss of consciousness.
Get ready to wear black
Victorian epoch is famous for its tough requirements for a mourning dress. Ladies from the highest society, Ovdov, at least a year had to wear full mourning and another year - halfraur, that is, the clothes of gray and purple tones. But this is not limited to this: the etiquette dictated to fall in Mourning, also after the loss of grandparents, uncle and to the tint, cousin. Thug on them should have followed at least 6 months. Since the sewing of the dresses was dear, many preferred to delay the term of mourning, so as not to be broken into clothes. With the filing of the Queen of Victoria after the death of Prince Albert, "all the paints of the world" preferred black, such behavior was considered extremely respectable. Well, if you consider how it was difficult to wash clothes and how quickly she got dirty because of that mud, which was surrounded by Victorians, it is not surprising that many ladies in any case did a choice in favor of non-smoke flowers.
And do not forget to suit
Long hair in those times were one of the distinguishing features of the rich ladies. If you have suffered, you are either poor or sick. At the same time, it was possible to wash the head of the Victorian lady that once a month and most often a means of diluted with water ammonia. In order for the curls glittered, they were cleared of dirt and dust, they were thoroughly combed soft, more similar to clothing brush comb, spending from head to tips at least 100 times. Magnificent, high hairstyles with numerous fancy laid braids demanded not only a long time on laying, but also additional linings and shigns. Most often, they were made from curls, aggravated and sold by poor women, but also there were practices for theft of hair at ... Deaders. And each lady on the dressing table was stood the box, in which she collected all the hair felling - they were then given to hairdressers for making all the same chignons.
Victorian decorations
Fashion for decorations in those times was also a bit strange. From some accessories, you would definitely crawled goosebumps. What is just worth the fashion for taxidermia: the birds stuffedly attached to the hats and fuses, injured by the gems of insects pledged to the lifuity of the dress or the belt. If you would have suffered a loss of a loved one, you would have to wear brooches with a "secret" - with strange curls hidden inside it.
Than smelling Victorian era
A modern man would need a gas mask not only to go around the city, "fragrant" wastewater ditch, garbage, smoke from factory pipes, but also to spend at least five minutes surrounded by ladies and cavaliers from the highest society. Amber from the street, the aromas of the unwashed body - all this riot of smells interrupted with numerous perfumes. In fashion there were thick floral flavors, musk and amber. Not only sought themselves, but everything around: perfumeful buttons were sewn to clothes, wrapped in perfume chairs, beds, cater seats. Fragravized paper paper and even books. Canceled everywhere Sasha with lavender. All these strong smells mixed and created a single wave, the familiar Victorians who were able to distinguish between even individual notes in it.
Enamel for face, meat masks and other Victorian cosmetics
The Victorian paradox was that decent women were not to use cosmetics, their beauty was obliged to be natural, but at the same time they were prescribed to have a smooth, white, almost marble skin. There were various compositions for silent on the basis of animal fat and wax, generously seasoned at best of chalk, in worst with acids and mercury. At the dawn of the XIX century, such a procedure has entered the fashion as enameling. The skin was covered with a thick layer of a peculiar brain-based cream. An experienced enamers could make that this mask hiding all flaws, held by weeks. True, the opposite side of the use of such cosmetics could be ulcers and paralysis of facial nerve. As a means of care, salts of paired meat had a lot of popularity that needed to impose on the face at night. If the eyebrows at the lady were not sores, and the eyelashes did not discard the gentle shadow, she used the parcels from mercury. To her cute eyes all the time were on a wet place, issuing sensitive nature, lemon juice drilled in them, and so that they were naive wide open - Belladonna.
Victorian diets
Bulimia and anorexia are not at all the disease of the XX-XXI centuries. Victorian lady had to be weak, tender, with a thin waist. To do without food was a kind of sport for young girls of that time. They could refuse eating weeks, and it was considered normal behavior. Those who could not curb appetite, but wanted to remain fashionable, resorted to the doses of arsenic or Strichnin. Or they took pills with cysts of the beef chain: the growing parasite absorbed part of the food, caused vomiting and diarrhea. And the most difficult and often fatally dangerous was to extract a ribbon worm when it reached a serious size.
Permanent fainting
Drawn into the corsets, increasing poisoning substances, sitting on the ladies' diets, then fainted. And it was considered normal, because women of that time were prescribed to be fragile, sensitive, buggy. In case the lady becomes not good, she always had to have a bottle for snuff salts or a pixer - a miniature silver box with a sponge-soaked essence. It came to the point that each policeman had to have a bottle with a vinegar with himself - suddenly in his presence a surrendent of an important lady, who did not have time to get his arsenal.
Poison surrounds you everywhere
Danger represented not only drugs based on poisons or poisonous wipes - the walls of the Victorian house were often toxic. They were stained with lead paints, walked with arsenic wallpaper - it was used to get green, purple, blue or pink colors. Even the clothes could be impregnated with poison. The Times newspaper recommended a prudent lady to carry a bottle with himself with ammonia alcohol to drip them on wallpaper and fabric before buying. In addition, toxic additives were waiting in casual products: lead chromat - in Musthers, copper arsenit - in pickles and compotes, mercury and venetian lead - in sweets. If people did not themselves immediately, the accumulative effect was sooner or later led to chronic gastritis, from which they were treated with new doses of not safe substances.
Sea resorts
To avoid long-staying in the poisoned cities and even a little improve health, the Victorians went to the sea resorts. But the beach life at that time was not at all like the modern one: the sea went not to swim and sunbathe, and walk in full ammunition with an umbrella and in a wide-headed hat, leading secular conversations. If it all reached swimming, then the lady went into the water in a dense suit from a sarge or cotton with long pants and stockings. Especially good-order ladies put on top of a skirt with girks on the alert so that she did not have and the chance to rise when entering the water. And despite the fact that no one saw women in such a costume: they descended into the water from special bathing cabins - trails on the wheels, which brought them away from the shallow water and in those places where there were no men.
Do you really believe movies and novels about the Victorian era or think that there were terrible times?