Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour by Dita Von Teese

Author:Dita Von Teese [Von Teese, Dita]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-30T23:00:00+00:00

In this 1931 portrait, Jean Harlow made her mark just north of her Cupid’s bow lips.

Preston Duncan/John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images

Renaissance doc Richard Sanders created his own methodology in which birthmarks could determine character traits, and centuries later the Victorians did the same with a most unscientific system that they labeled with a scientific-sounding name, moleoscopy.

Paint It Black–or Not

Since I am no wallflower to extremes, I prefer to emphasize my tattooed beauty mark by darkening it with a black pencil.

Natural beauty marks can be darkly pigmented, though they tend to lean on the black side of brown, and most faces look best with a color that matches other moles on the body. Auburn-haired lovelies might consider a burnt sienna color, while blondes can opt for a medium brown.

Or break the rules altogether and draw in a beauty mark that is purple, electric blue, or hot pink!

Amuse-Mouche

The rage for beauty marks over the centuries has inspired some expressive alternatives to makeup, which can smear when one least wants it to.

As early as the 1600s, English citizenry of all ages, genders, and classes pasted “patches” of suns, stars, fish, and other designs on their cheeks. This didn’t go over well with the stiff upper English Parliament, which introduced a bill for the trend’s suppression in 1650. The proposed law failed.

A half century later, in fact, the side on which a beauty patch was worn revealed political allegiance: Whigs on the right, Tories on the left. That’s one way to rock the vote.

Tiny patches cut from silk, taffeta, and velvet called mouches (French for “flies”) adorned the rouged and powdered faces of eighteenth-century ladies and gents. To match the wildly extravagant one-upmanship among many of the most fashionable, there were mouches shaped as a three-masted ship, a tree with lovebirds, or a coach drawn by four horses.

Since then, ornamental marks applied with coquettish aplomb have undergone all sorts of material manifestations, from a single Swarovski crystal to a geometric bindi to a patent leather dot.

The San Francisco French-inspired curiosity shop Bell’occhio offers a twenty-pack of velvet mouches in circles, hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades based on the archaic codes that each shape signified. At the corner of the mouth, a mouche suggests playfulness; at the corner of the eye, it’s the sign of a come-hither vamp.

A Swarovski crystal in a variety of sizes and colors can also provide a twinkle of glamour. Stick on skin, as with any mouche, by way of eyelash glue or spirit gum . . . and luck!

Then there’s Miki Lanese, a suburban cosmetics entrepreneur based in Orange, California, who after decades of beauty experiments came up with her own peel-and-stick mouches at an accessible price, which she calls Hottiedots! Proof that even the real housewives of the OC can make their beauty mark!

Making an Indelible Point

Tattooing requires commitment, since it means always having a mark—and going under the needle for it. Not only is it advisable to see a specialist in permanent cosmetics or medical cosmetic tattooing because of his or her ability, but my dermatologist insists on it for health reasons.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.