Vizard Mask As Ladies Fashion Accessory
The word vizard (sometimes visard) is used in Shakespearean English to refer to a visor, a mask, or a disguise (ex. "There, then, that vizard, that superfluous case, that hid the worse and show'd the better face." -- Love's Labors Lost V.ii.387)
Vizards were a fashion accessory for upper-class European ladies - gentlewomen - in the late 16th and into the 18th century. These light-weight masks were intended to protect a lady's face from sunlight while traveling in an open carriage, to preserve the (then) fashionable "look" of pale skin and rosy cheeks. This paleness contrasted with the sun-tanned skin of working-class women. Playwright William Shakespeare mentions this sun-adverse fashion craze in his play of 1590/91, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act 4: Scene 4): "But since she did neglect her looking-glass; And threw her sun-expelling mask away, The air hath starved the roses of her cheeks; And pinched the lily-tincture of her face; That now she is become as black as I".
The Norwich Castle Museum in England has a rare surviving example of a lady's sun vizard. The plain (unadorned), oval-shaped mask covers the entire face, with two eye-holes and small opening at the mouth. It is made of black velvet, the inside lined with silk and stiffened with white paper; there is a glass bead attached to inside of the mouth opening, an aid to keeping the mask in place by gripping the bead with ones' teeth. The voluminous hairdos worn by ladies at this time prevented the mask from being secured by a ribbon tied around the head.
Read more about this topic: Vizor
Famous quotes containing the words mask, ladies and/or fashion:
“What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash?”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)
“When other Ladies to the Shades go down,
Still Flavia, Chloris, Celia stay in Town;
Those Ghosts of Beauty ling’ring there abide,
And haunt the places where their Honour dy’d.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value.... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)