FAQ

Possible self-portrait of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1787

This blog now has a FAQ. This post have a permanent position above.

If you have any questions not covered in this FAQ, please don’t hesitate to contact me at isis.33 at passagen.se

  

Do you sell any products? No, I don’t. I have thought about it, but Swedish regulations make it much too expensive and difficult to do that on a hobby basis.

Where can I buy cosmetics made after historical recipes then? Try these shops:

Ageless Artifice They don’t have a web shop anymore, but they still sell products. You can read my review of several of their 18^th century products here.

Little Bits on Etsy. I don’t have any personal experience of their products, but you can read American Duchess’ review here.

Sally Pointer I have only tried her white lead substitute, but she has done a lot of research into historical cosmetics and knows a lot about it.

Where do you shop for ingredients? You can find a list here.

Where do you find the recipes you use? By playing detective a bit. Searching Google books has proved a bit of a gold mine. Even if the books may not be available online, you at least get titles and authors. When reading books about cosmetics I take note of sources and check them out.

You seem to know a lot about historical makeup. Why don’t you write a book about it? Maybe… I have been thinking about it quite a lot, actually. If I do, though, I don’t think I would be able to pull it off writing it in English, but in my native Swedish.

You use [ingredient X] in a recipe and I’m allergic to that. Why do you use that if people are allergic to it? You can have allergies just about everything, so to provide recipes that no one is allergic to, is impossible. I try to be clear if allergic reactions are common, but I strongly urge anyone who wants to try any of the recipes found here, to do more research about the ingredients needed and to do a patch test.

How historically correct are you? As close as I can. I never use ingredients that are harmful for you and I try to steer clear from anything that are endangered, so recipes including such things are by necessity less correct. I try to find substitutes which are as close as possible to the original ingredient. I also make the recipes with modern equipment.

You wrote [statement y] which isn’t correct. Can I trust that what you write is true? My aim is to be as correct as possible. However, this blog is a research tool for me, not the end product. In other words, my research is ongoing and I constantly go back and revise. I may get things wrong or misunderstand things. If you think something I say is wrong, please ask. Or do a bit of research on your own- research is a great ways to exercise the brain cells.

You mostly write about the 18^th century even if the blog title says it’s about historical makeup. Are you going to write about other time periods as well? My main interest lies mainly with the 17^th and the 18^th century, but I don’t want to restrict myself to that narrow period as I may very well want to write about cosmetics in a broader sense. As I have in a few posts already. I will probably not write much about the 19^th century for the reason that there already is a blog that does that very well:

The Gibson Girl's Guide to Glamor

Sally Pointer also has a few articles on cosmetics.