for by English Heritage. I'm standing inside an incredible Georgian house in

North London which was once home to William Murray 1st Earl of Mansfield

and his aristocratic companions in the 1700s. Today we're going to be looking at

the late 18th century and we're going to show you how to recreate an authentic

Georgian look. We'll be exploring not only what the cosmetics can reveal about

England during this period but also why bigger was better for the hairstyles of

the Georgians. Plus we've got an extra special treat for you. We're going to be

recreating two Georgian looks and talking about how both women and men

used makeup to make an impression in Georgian society. I am so excited to see this!

Hi Rebecca

Hello Amber, welcome to the Georgian era

Thank you

This is Ashleigh, our model

Hi Ashleigh

Take a great look at her because she's

going to be unrecognisable very soon.

I can not wait. So today we're focusing on

the Georgian era, this is a period of huge political and social upheaval huge change

Now technically it lasts from 1714 to 1837 but we're going to be focusing

on just two decades, the 1770s and 1780s when George III was on the throne

So Rebecca what are the key elements from the look from this era?

Well the look changed a little bit throughout the centuries but we're going to focus on doing

pale porcelain skin. dark black eyebrows and flushed rosy cheeks - it's going to be

very elegant very beautiful

Fantastic! Ican't wait let's get started

Let's do it

So step number one is, just like today, skin prep, and I've done loads of

research on skin care. Georgian ladies used creams, they used waters, they used

all sorts of lotions. I found a great recipe that involves the juice of

strawberries - wow! - onto skin

Apparently you would put it on at night,

you'd leave it on your skin overnight and then

you wash it off with water with chervil in it, which is a form of parsley

What this does, apparently, is to get rid of freckles and also to clear a tanned skin

It's interesting you say that this was to get rid of freckles. This is a period

where we see the onset of the Industrial Revolution which you know really brings

in huge changes throughout society. But the period we're in at the moment having

tan skin or having freckles is really associated with outdoor agricultural

work. It essentially is a sign that you don't have much money and so this is why

people are trying to avoid it so much

And the look that we're doing today is

for an aristocratic lady, so she wouldn't have had freckles, she wouldn't have had

a tan so we're going to get rid of those

So we're going to get rid of those freckles with our chervil water and strawberry face cream

Fantastic. Now the process of sort of getting dressed and getting

ready the whole toilette was quite elaborate for women at this time and

could be quite performative in some ways as well. There are some accounts of women

getting ready while having breakfast or even while entertaining other women you

could use it as a sort of socialising time for chatting and catching up on

gossip and things like that as well

So our next step is to start creating the

look and we've already said that we are going to be creating a look for

aristocratic ladies, and this one is for an affluent lady who's going out

socialising. To achieve this pale, porcelain look I'm using an authentic-ish Georgian

recipe for a white face base. Now I say authentic-ish because there are some

ingredients that I can't get hold of today like ceruse which, is white led

So this is still being used at this time in the Georgian era? The ceruse which is

very poisonous, corrosive substance?

Yep. But women like Kitty Fisher and the

Waldegrave sisters still insisted on wearing this white lead, white makeup

So you're not using that today, just to clarify?

No, we're definitely not using that today

This is a combination of sweet almond oil and titanium dioxide pigment

which is used in makeup today and also a little bit of bees wax

And how are you going to create the dark brows that we so associate with this era?

Well interestingly enough, I'm going to be using a clove to coat the eyebrows

Have a smell

Oh wow!

They smell amazing. You need to burn the end of a clove

It smells like Christmas!

I know! And then you can draw them on and they

make really quite surprisingly effective eyebrow pencils

Who'd have thought it!

I know! But there were other rumors around at that time that people were using things like

mouse fur to create those thick, lush eyebrows

Well a lot of the sources that

talk about mouse fur being used for eyebrows are satirical sources so people

like Jonathan Swift wrote about it, there are a few prints as well, satirical prints

that talk about mouse fur eyebrows which is why we're not really

sure if it was actually used or if it's just something that people joked about

We're beginning to enter a real golden age of satire at this time. People start

to flourish in the new print culture like Gillray and Cruikshank especially

as we move into the 19th century as well. Around this period there a couple called

Matthew and Mary Darly who created amazing satirical prints. A lot of them

really focused on hair and how elaborate Georgian hair could become. So fashion

was a real target for satirists at this time. The eyebrows are looking fantastic

I know, isn't it a great colour?

It's really good, it's perfect

Now it's time to add some color to this face and I'm going to use a modern, safe

alternative to a product called vermilion, which is actually red mercury

Again it's another really toxic ingredient that women were constantly

using on their cheeks to get this bright, rosy flush

I love this it looks so incredible, it looks so authentic

It's so gorgeous, I love it!

This is a look that we're really used to

seeing on French portraits especially portraits of Marie Antoinette for

example from this time. And it was a look for that reason that many women in England

really wanted to emulate. We see this with fashions throughout this era

as well. There were some differences between English and French fashions

And it also reflected the differences in the sort of structure of power in each of the

countries. In France you have this very court-centric power culture where

Versailles is the absolute center and its this kind of spectacular

theater of power and wealth. In England it's a bit more sort of geographically

diverse and you have the managing of the country estate being a really important

facet of aristocratic life. So things like walking, like taking the air, being a

bit more active for a lot more important this is something we see especially in

menswear where there's a bit more of a focus on wool rather than French silks

So this is certainly a really fashionable look but it's also something

that's slightly seen as improper sometimes as well as sort of very, very French

Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, her

mother wrote to her in opprobrium at one point and said 'how glad I should be if

you could tell me you had quite done with rouge'

I love that quote

And there was a really lovely portrait that I've seen where the ladies in the portrait

have coloured their earlobes in with a tiny bit of rouge

For our lip colour I'm using exactly the same product, but this time it's mixed with beeswax to make it

more like a lipstick texture

Let's finish this makeup off with the ultimate Georgian accessory, which is the

face patch. Now we're cheating slightly because face patches were actually more

in fashion a little bit earlier than the time that we're focusing on, but I couldn't resit it

Well this sounds fantastic. What were they made of, these patches?

So they could be made from silk, you could make them from velvet or sometimes you

could make them from fine Spanish leather. They came in a range of

different shapes

Now these patches served a number of

purposes didn't they. They firstly serve to highlight the whiteness of the skin

next to the, you know, dark patch itself and this isn't even an old idea if we

think of someone like Marilyn Monroe for example and her beauty spot. This is

still something that we associate with beauty to this day really. But also they

could hide a multitude of sins: pox marks, scars, moles any kind of

blemish that you didn't want to have on your face you could hide with a patch

I love that idea!

It's just absolutely so handy! There are also a number of secret languages of

patches that we can read about in different accounts from this time as well

People basically said that wherever you wore it on your face meant

something different

So I've got one here, what does that mean?

So if you had a patch near your mouth the accounts that I've seen suggest that it meant sort of

coquettishness or kissing, something quite cheeky basically

And I'm gonna put one here, what does that mean?

So near the eye could mean passion or could even mean killing, so quite a

dangerous little number that one

She's a dangerous lady!

But they could also have political meanings as well

There was a report in The Spectator in 1711 that said women of a Whig

persuasion would wear patches on the right hand side where as Tories would

wear them on the left.

And that's everything that we're going to do on the face,

but a Georgian lady is nothing without her hair and that is a big

affair, it's going to take me some time

Ok well while you do that I'm going to

go and find out more about Kenwood

We're in this majestic Music Room and the whole of Kenwood is so beautiful

can you tell me a bit about the history?

Yes the first house is built here in the

early 17th century but the house we see today largely reflects the taste of

William Murray who purchased Kenwood for £4,000 in 1754

£4,000, pounds that sounds like a bargain to me!

It was a reasonable amount

but you had to make a lot of changes to the property so he employed the Scottish

neoclassical architect Robert Adam and his brother James to completely

transform Kenwood

And so that turned it into the sort of neoclassical mansion that we know it as today?

It did, and in the 1790s wings were added to the

building so the room that we stand in now is actually one in one of those wings

And so what was happening outside these walls in the late 18th century?

For some people it was a period of great prosperity with the boom in

manufacturing but with this increase in industry and also with the rise in

population cities could become very overcrowded and unsanitary. But there

were also places a great spectacle, so it was great period for the

theatre, for pleasure gardens and also for shopping

William Murray, he was a judge and he made quite an important ruling when he was Lord Chief Justice

Can you tell me about that?

He was the most powerful judge in England as Lord Chief Justice

and in 1772 he had a particularly significant case and that

was the case of James Somerset. Somerset was a former slave who had been

imprisoned by his once master and he was about to be sent to Jamaica in order

to be sold. But Murray ruled that no slaver could forcibly send a slave out

of England and in his summing up he described slavery as 'odious' so that was

just very much one small step in a much longer journey towards the abolition of slavery

William Murray lived here with two nieces as well didn't he

One of which, Dido Elizabeth Belle, I'm really keen to hear more about

Dido came to live here at Kenwood in about 1766 and she was the illegitimate daughter of

John Lindsay and an African woman, Maria Belle, who was possibly a slave

although we don't have the evidence to necessarily prove that, but Lindsay, who

was Lord Mansfield's nephew, had been stationed in the Caribbean and was

an officer of the Royal Navy. Now Dido as both illegitimate and also

mixed-race would have faced many challenges in 18th century English

society. But we do know that she was brought up here at Kenwood as a lady. She

was a companion to her cousin; she was taught to read, write and play music and

she also supervised the dairy which was a popular pastime for ladies in that period

Now this room is filled with many examples of other other women from this

period. Tell me about the exquisite works of art that we're seeing here

These paintings are part of an outstanding collection that was formed by Edward

Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and then was given to the nation along with the

house after his death in 1927

And this woman here in particular is very familar

Could you tell me a bit more about this painting?

Yes so this is Caroline Alicia Fleming who in 1776 married John Brisco and that's actually

the same date we believe as when she posed this portrait by Thomas

Gainsborough. Her husband was later made a baronet

so we know her today as Lady Brisco

I love the fact that so many of the

pictures here, the paintings they're quite romantic,

they're quite whimsical. There's an element of sort of costume and fancy

dress to many of them can you tell me about what we're seeing?

So there was very much a trend to depict 18th century ladies as characters from

history, from literature and myths and that was the cause history paintings were

seen as the most important type of paintings in this period, much more

important than portraiture. So the artists were very much trying to elevate

the status of portraiture and their own status as artists. But I can imagine it

would have been very flattering as an 18th century lady to be portrayed as a

Greek goddess or a Shakespearean heroine as well

And speaking of history we've got someone dressed as Cleopatra here right

Yes so this is Kitty Fisher, the famous 18th century courtesan. But Joshua Reynolds the

painter has chosen to show her as Cleopatra and it's very much an allusion

to Kitty's own seductive charms

And so we're seeing a real flourishing of the arts in this period aren't we

Absolutely, both in terms of portraiture and also

theater and of course fashion.

I love the fashions from this era for both

women and men. I'm particularly keen on cultivating a

sort of menswear silhouette from this era, it's definitely one of my favourites