"Balayage" explained

My curiosity was tweaked by the 1974 photo above, from the New York Times' Lively Morgue:

"“We never speak of dying,” a misspelled ad boasts, quoted in a roundup of hair coloring techniques available in the city.  While the procedure pictured here — which required 1,000 feet of cotton stripping — might resemble some kind of April Fool’s prank carried out by the colorist, it was apparently a real thing for fine hair, called balayage au cotton." 

The caption that mocked misspelling in the advertisement had its own misspelling; I eventually found balayage au coton defined at A Way With Words:

 n.— The shop has imported a young man named Yvan from the Carita salon in Paris to do what he calls a “balayage au cotton.” Starting at the nape, Yvan lifted out fine strands and applied a lightening paste with a thin brush. Instead of the usual foil wrapping, he tucked pieces of cotton wadding to support the strands in process and keep them from the rest of the hair. When he was three-quarters through, he had used 1,000 feet of cotton stripping and Miss Weston looked as though she were wearing an enormous white wig. The idea of the balayage (the word means sweeping) is to lighten fine strands of hair, rather than add color...

The definitive answer came at Maxine Salon:

The most natural-looking results are usually those that look the most random, which calls for a very specific placement strategy... It’s important to note that balayage is definitely not just for blondes. Brunettes, redheads, even those with black hair can all take advantage of hair painting. The results will be subtle, but they’ll add the dimension that everyone craves, giving a dark brunette swirls of cinnamon or caramel, for example....

Foils often end up looking contrived - a neat row of uniform highlights. When a section of hair is colored using a foil, the entire section is saturated with color resulting in dense, unnatural stripes of color.

Balayage color is painted in soft brush strokes across the surface of the hair, leaving you with natural-looking swipes of color that flow from thick to thin and play off the hair's natural movement. Even better, balayage won't leave you with any signs of demarcation, creating a softer and more manageable grow-out. 

YouTube link.

I suppose women readers have known about all of this for years, but it was new to me.  You learn something every day.

Vivienne Westwood catwalk models, Paris, 2014

I've been accused of being provincial or narrow-minded when I've made snarky comments about modern fashion in dress, so I'll just hush up and let these photos speak for themselves.

From a gallery with dozens of photos at The Telegraph.

Queen Marie of Romania

Via Alabaster.  I was unable to find an explanation as to whether the headdress is part of some ceremony of state, or whether this is stage/costume/revelry related.  A TinEye reverse image search didn't help.  Biography here.

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader Unknown ND Martin for finding the definitive answer: "Diana Mandache originally published the picture in her book about Queen Marie and in correspondence noted that (then) Princess Marie was dressed as the Sun for a fancy ball."

How to roll up your sleeves

"A new uniform rule that takes effect Monday will require all Marines to wear their sleeves rolled down, all year long.

Beginning next week, leathernecks in Marine Pattern utilities will be required to cover their arms no matter the climate or place, according to Marine administrative message 621/11, signed Oct. 18."

More information at Marine Corps Times, via an article at Lew Rockwell.

Readers who are not in the Marines may wish to read the column at The Art of Manliness, which explains in detail when, why, and how to roll up your cuffs (including an instructional video).

Science tattoos

Depictions of a CERN bubble chamber and a horseshoe crab are two of the ten examples in an annotated gallery posted at Accidental Mysteries.

First Prize at a Fancy Dress Ball

 

Found at Fuck Yeah Victorians!

Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!

The "Glasgow Smile" [Heath Ledger/The Joker] has gone mainstream:

[A] new technique called “Smile Lipt” carves a permanent smile into an otherwise angry face. The procedure, whose name combines “lip” with “lift”—get it?—turns up the corners of the mouth...

The Seoul-based Aone Plastic Surgery has patented the procedure, according to the clinic’s blog. For $2,000, it now offers patients the chance to be thus transformed...

The procedure is, as KRT reports, increasingly popular among men and women in their 20s and 30s—especially flight attendants, consultants and others in industries aiming to offer service with a smile...

In essence, it can make patients smile… even when they’re not smiling. That could prove problematic during “funerals, breakups and fights with your significant other,” as RocketNews24 notes. 

Via The Dish.

Screw fastened shoes

I remember years ago digging through an old dump looking for bottles and finding shoe soles with the nails protruding.  I didn't know until today that some shoes used screws to attach the sole to the upper.

Image via Alabaster.

Edwardian hairstyles

Part of a larger gallery at The Vintage Thimble, via Edwardian Era.

Honey, does this dress make my butt look fat?

"Jacqueline Bradley, a Canberra-based artist, created the classic 1950s-style cream and floral 'Boat Dress' that actually floats on water."

Via Neatorama.

Children of Ethiopia's Omo tribes

Photos by Hans Silvestre, from a gallery in The Daily Mail, via Curiosités de Titam. The photos are from the book 'Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa', published by Thames and Hudson.

Brassieres losing support

Excerpts from an article in the StarTribune:

Wearing a bra might actually make your breasts sag.  At least that’s the conclusion drawn by Jean-Denis Rouillon, a professor at the University of Besançon in France. For the past 15 years, Rouillon has been diligently taking a slide rule and caliper to the breasts of 320 women, ages 18 to 35, to measure any changes, particularly the relationship of the nipple to the shoulder...

The sports science expert told France Info radio that “bras are a false necessity,” and that “medically, physiologically, anatomically — breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity. On the contrary, they get saggier with a bra.”..

According to the French study, that “lift” allows ligaments that support breast tissue to become weak. Rouillon said that women who did not wear bras had, on average, “nipples [that] lifted on average seven millimetres in one year in relation to the shoulders,” according to an account in the Connexion, France’s English language newspaper. (That’s about a quarter-inch.) Thus, he concluded, breasts would gain more tone and be better able to support themselves if no bra was used...

Note the study has not yet been peer-reviewed.  More at the link.

Photo ("Bra authority Ida Rosenthal measured a model for a brassiere in New York in 1950") credit: Bob Wands/ Associated Press.

"Snail facial"

A Japanese beauty salon has developed a new skin treatment involving slime discharge from live snails... The treatment involves a therapist placing snails directly onto the faces of reclining clients and allowing the molluscs to move at random, leaving trails of mucus slime in their wake.

The secreted snail mucus is key to the facial, as it reportedly contains a beauty-boosting cocktail of proteins, antioxidants and hyaluronic acid, which help skin retain moisture, reduce inflammation and remove dead skin.

This is not from The Onion; it's from The Telegraph, via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

Babugeri

Explanation at Slavic Unity, via Reddit.

"Scouse brow" explained

From a fashion column at The Telegraph:

So what is Scouse Brow? Let me break it down for you…
Take one pair of normal eyebrows. Pluck, thread or wax to within a millimeter of their lives. Now that there's little discernable hair left, it's time to paint your brows back on of course!...

Now take an eye make-up brush and paint the darkest eyebrow make-up product you can find liberally over your Spartan brows, and bingo! The brutal Scouse Brow is complete.

It's important to note at this point that you need pay ZERO attention to the colour of your hair - this is not about subtlety or coordination - in fact, even if your hair is bleached whiter than an Essex girl's stiletto, feel no shame in making your brows look like they've been drawn on with a Sharpie pen...

We've said it before and we'll say it again: The Duchess of Cambridge will live to regret her decision to do her own make-up on her wedding day. If not only for the heavy-handed result, but for the fact that wicked whispers point to Kate's bridal maquillage as the possible inspiration for the whole Scouse Brow movement.

A gallery of 16 examples of Scouse Brows.

A "motley crew" dance for you

YouTube link.

Via Boing Boing.

A good excuse to review "motley":

The word motley is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as a cognate with medley, although the unrelated mottled has also contributed to the meaning... When used as a noun, it can mean "a varied mixture." As an adjective, it is generally disparaging — a motley collection is an uninspiring pile of stuff, as in the cliche motley crew.

The word originated in England between the 14th and 17th centuries and referred to a woolen fabric of mixed colors. It was the characteristic dress of the professional fool...

[M]otley did not have to be checkered and has been recently thought to be one pattern with different colored threads running through it.

Motley is the only wear.

—Shakespeare, As You Like It, ii. 7

Stylish compression garments

Anyone who has dealt with edema will be familiar with compression stockings (we used to call them TED hose).  They were designed for function, not fashion, and were colored and styled to be as inobtrusive as possible.  The only ones I ever remember seeing were either white or "flesh" colored (and the "flesh" was always Caucasian - though that may have changed in recent years).

Now a new product is available to breast cancer patients and others wishing to prevent or suppress lymphedema in the upper extremity.

It used to be that the only kind of sleeves available looked like big ugly bandages, but LympheDIVAs, a company started by two women with breast cancer in Philadelphia, was one of the first to change that. LympheDIVAs creates sleeves and gauntlets so funky and pretty, you could imagine wearing them just because they look cool. I wear their product regularly, and have found them to be pretty great. When I put on my "Lotus Dragon" one, people think I have an actual sleeve tattoo, which cracks me up.

Further details at Boing Boing.

Medical nipple tattoos vs. "titoos"

The embedded image shows the breasts of a mastectomy patient who has subsequently received cosmetic tattoos of nipples.  This is one of four examples depicted in a small gallery at BreastCancer.org.  It can be done with or without nipple reconstruction ("If you want the projection then tattooing can be done in conjunction with recon but if you do not need the projection 3-D tattooing can give you the illusion of projection without the additional surgery.")  It can also be done on radiated skin.

Found while reading about "titooing," which is pure cosmetic enhancement of people with nipples:

Gail Proudman, an independent clinician based in Merseyside, tattoos the nipples of more than three women a week and has seen a huge increase in young women coming in for the latest cosmetic trend. She explains: "A lot of people want their nipples made darker. It’s the fashion. Some people think theirs are too pink or their boyfriends want them done. I think sometime they are doing it because they are conscious of them being pale and they think it’s fashionable to have dark nipples...

The two-hour procedure, which can cost up to £1,200 for both nipples, lasts around 12 to 18 months and top-ups are recommended to restore any colour lost as the ink fades over time... In Liverpool, a number of salons already offer nipple tattooing and there at least 15 independent technicians based in the area. It is rapidly catching up with vajazzles, designer vaginas and boob jobs as the latest cosmetic procedure available to women nationwide. 

More re the pros and cons of the procedure in The Telegraph.

"Makeup" nylons during WWII

Silk or nylon stockings were in extremely short supply by the summer of 1942... Most women had to find ingenious methods of dressing their legs. These pictures show a woman drawing in the seam-line on “Makeup” stockings with a device made from a screw driver handle, bicycle leg clip, and an eyebrow pencil, 1942. (source: Bettman/Corbis)

From The Vintage Thimble, via good girls finish last.

"Cheekini" explained

Cheekini: A style of women’s underwear with moderate coverage in front and on the sides and a raised cut in the rear that covers some but not all of the buttock cheeks.

The style sometimes appears, with minor variations, under different names: boykini panties, boyleg briefs, hipster panties, booty shorts. All are marketed as comfortable, panty-line-less alternatives to thong underwear.

I first discovered cheekini on the Victoria’s Secret website, but the term is neither original nor exclusive to that retailer. JC Penney sells cheekini panties under its Flirtitude label; it also sells visually similar boykini panties and hipster panties.

There's more information about cheekinis at Fritinancy, which also offers this evocative alternative term for thongs:  "butt floss."

Image from Victoria's Secret.