5 - The Celebrity as Beauty Icon

Summary

The periodical press circulated visual ideals of beauty, especially through the representation of girls and women in photographs and illustrations, fashion plates and advertisements. While illustrations and plates provided models for emulation of the latest styles of dress, there was little continuity provided by these largely anonymous images because they were not intended to represent particular women. At the same time, the growth of celebrity culture in the late nineteenth century corresponded with developments in printing and advertising, as well as shifts in magazine types and content. The combination of these factors meant that a select subset of women could serve as models of ideal beauty across time and fashion trends, and consequently could become linked with the promotion and consumption of beauty products. This chapter considers the idealised appearances of imagined figures of beauty as constructed through magazine and advertising illustration and pinpoints how the consumerist impulses of the period in print were imbricated with developing models of female celebrity. These women were primarily drawn from the stage, as actresses and singers, and their association with glamour and spectacle con-tributed to the slowly won acceptance of cosmetics and challenged the impossible natural ideal.

In the 1880s and 1890s, performers who appeared with prominence in articles and advertising in the Sketch (1893–1959) and Myra's Journal of Dress and Fashion (1875–1912), included Italian opera singer Adelina Patti, English actress Ellen Terry and British-American socialite and actress Lillie Langtry. In this chapter I elaborate on the representation of the female celebrity in both magazines in the late nineteenth century in order to demonstrate how the celebrity becomes an important part of the beauty ideal and its transformation. I discuss how the publicity surrounding glamorous female stage celebrities and their integration within advertisements for beauty products helped to ease some of the sensitivities surrounding cosmetic usage. Finally, I consider how, at the turn of the century, cosmeticians such as Eugène Rimmel and Madame Pomeroy worked to establish themselves as trusted, recognised names in the periodical press to establish the validity of their businesses and legitimise the purchase of commercial beauty products.

The actress celebrity in late-Victorian periodicals