PARTY PATCHES

Evening Star, Issue 20313, 23 October 1929, Page 13

PARTY PATCHES

OLD-TIME BEAUTY DEVICE Old books and chronicles show that the custom among women of decorating their faces with patches did not originate, as is sometimes supposed, among the beauties of the Court of Louis XV. Fairholt’s ‘Costume in England ’ Fictures a woman in the time of Charles . with very elaborate patchwork upon her face, the objects represented in out-outs being a coach and horses, a star and two mouths, not to mention a disc-like patch upon her chin. And the historian, R. Chambers, says the cut-out decoration was common among the Roman women, says a writer in the New York * Times.’ Mr Pepys duly recorded his wife’s first appearance in patches, which, Mr Chambers remarks, “ seems to have taken place without his concurrence, as, three months he makes an entry in his diary; I My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being the first time I had given her leave to wear a black patch.’ And a week or two later he declared that his wife, with two or three patches 5 looked far handsomer than the Princess Henrietta. Lady Castlemain, whose word was law. decreed that patches could not be worn without mourning, but they seem to have been held proper on all other occasions, being worn in the afternoon, at the theatre, in the parks in the. evening, and in the drawing room at night. In the days of Queen Anne, it is said on the authority of the ‘Spectator,’ patches were used by women as party symbols, the Whips patching on the right and the Tories on the left side of the face. Those who were neutral appear to have decorated both cheeks. Women, it seems, were even then in politics, and though they bad not the vote, they held out for some of the rights that their followers later contended for. In a draft of marriage articles it is related that one prospective bride stipulated that she cpuld wear patches on whichever side of her face she pleased, regardless of her husband’s political convictions. That was in 1711. Forty years later the patch was still not only in existence, but “threatened to overwhelm the female face altogether.”