https://glowgazette.co.uk/ A quarterly on the history and culture of beauty: pigment, mirrors, salons, rites, and what is actually established. en-GB Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:40:00 +0000 Glow Gazette 2026 Glow Gazette editorial@glowgazette.co.uk (Glow Gazette) https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Beauty became a trade before it became an industry. Both happened faster than most accounts allow. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received https://glowgazette.co.uk/received Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Beauty history is unusually full of confident anecdotes that trace back to nothing. Here is where we sort them. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making https://glowgazette.co.uk/making Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 How the substances people put on themselves were made, by whom, and what happened when the making went wrong. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Every new way of fixing an image has quietly rewritten what a face was supposed to look like. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Adornment has almost always been about belonging, grief, rank and occasion before it was about attraction. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/ https://glowgazette.co.uk/ Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A quarterly on the history and culture of beauty: pigment, mirrors, salons, rites, and what is actually established. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/dangerous-cosmetics-and-their-lessons https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/dangerous-cosmetics-and-their-lessons Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Radium, thallium, lead, mercury and a lash dye that blinded people. The documented cases are worse than the invented ones, and they follow a pattern. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-hairdresser-a-social-history https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-hairdresser-a-social-history Sat, 28 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Wigmakers, waving machines, apprenticeships and a geometric cut. The hairdressing trade has reinvented itself roughly every forty years. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/the-standard-that-never-was https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/the-standard-that-never-was Sat, 28 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Symmetry, averageness, a particular waist to hip ratio. The claim that these are universal is repeated constantly. The evidence is much more modest. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/bathing-cultures https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/bathing-cultures Sat, 28 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The Roman thermae, the hammam, the sento and the Victorian public baths were all answers to the same question, and they answered it very differently. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/patents-secrets-and-recipes https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/patents-secrets-and-recipes Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A patent requires you to publish. A secret requires you to keep quiet. The cosmetics industry has generally chosen quiet, and the reasons are instructive. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/the-tanning-turn https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/the-tanning-turn Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 For centuries a tan meant labour and pallor meant rank. Within about two decades that reversed, and the usual explanation for it is far too neat. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/soap-and-the-invention-of-clean https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/soap-and-the-invention-of-clean Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Cleanliness has not always meant washing, and washing has not always meant water. The idea that a clean body indicates a good person has a traceable history. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/the-front-facing-camera https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/the-front-facing-camera Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A wide lens held at arm's length, a live filter and an audience of one. The third great rewriting of the face is the first that happens in real time. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/ageing-as-a-construct https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/ageing-as-a-construct Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Old age has a history. When it starts, what it looks like and what it entitles you to have all been decided repeatedly, and differently. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/department-store-counter https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/department-store-counter Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The ground floor cosmetics hall is a piece of retail engineering. Its layout explains the industry's economics better than any annual report. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/cleopatra-and-the-milk-bath https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/cleopatra-and-the-milk-bath Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Six famous claims about historical cosmetics, followed backwards to their sources. Several arrive nowhere. One arrives at the wrong empress. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/the-colour-additive-reckoning https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/the-colour-additive-reckoning Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The permitted colours list is the least glamorous document in the industry and the most consequential. It was written after people were hurt. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/colour-film-and-skin https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/colour-film-and-skin Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Colour film stock had to be balanced against a reference. For decades that reference was a single kind of face, and the consequences are documented. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/men-and-grooming https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/men-and-grooming Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The idea that men have only recently started grooming is wrong in every period you care to check. What changes is what counts as grooming. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-language-of-beauty-copy https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-language-of-beauty-copy Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Radiance, purity, renewal, clinically proven, dermatologically tested. Each of these has a traceable origin, and several mean less than they appear to. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/everything-old-is-new https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/everything-old-is-new Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A treatment is announced as a breakthrough, turns out to have a long precedent, and is announced again a generation later. The cycle has a mechanism. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/perfume-as-a-language https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/perfume-as-a-language Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Perfume has notes, accords, families and a pyramid. None of that vocabulary is very old, and most of it was invented to teach or to sell. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/retouching-before-photoshop https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/retouching-before-photoshop Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Pencil on the negative, knife on the emulsion, airbrush on the print. Photographs have been edited since the 1850s, and the arguments have not changed. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/the-politics-of-hair https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/the-politics-of-hair Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Hair has been taxed, legislated, forcibly cut and required to be covered. It is the part of the body most consistently subject to rules. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-barbershop-and-the-surgeon https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-barbershop-and-the-surgeon Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 For centuries the man who cut your hair also let your blood and pulled your teeth. The separation, when it came, was a matter of guild politics. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/alchemy-to-laboratory https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/alchemy-to-laboratory Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Cosmetics were made at home, then by apothecaries, then by chemists, then by corporations. Each move changed who was allowed to know the recipe. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/cinema-and-the-close-up https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/cinema-and-the-close-up Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Cinema enlarged the face to the size of a wall and lit it from a fixed direction. Makeup, and the idea of a good face, changed to suit. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/beauty-under-rationing https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/beauty-under-rationing Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Cosmetics were never rationed in Britain, but they became scarce and expensive. What happened next says a great deal about what appearance is for. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-salon-as-a-civic-space https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/the-salon-as-a-civic-space Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The salon is a shop, a workplace and something harder to name: a room where people sit still, in company, for an hour, and talk. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/white-lead-and-the-long-goodbye https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/white-lead-and-the-long-goodbye Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Lead white was worn on faces for two millennia and its toxicity was known for much of that time. Why it took so long to go is the real question. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/photography-rewrites-the-face https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/photography-rewrites-the-face Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Early photographic emulsions could not see red. That fact changed how skin, freckles and lips appeared, and what people did about them. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/marriage-and-the-made-up-face https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/marriage-and-the-made-up-face Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The white wedding is younger than most people think, and the assumptions attached to it are younger still. Other traditions made entirely different choices. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/inventing-the-beauty-industry https://glowgazette.co.uk/trade/inventing-the-beauty-industry Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Cosmetics existed for millennia. An industry did not. It was built in about forty years by a small number of people, several of whom were outsiders. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/ochre-and-the-first-cosmetic https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/ochre-and-the-first-cosmetic Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 People have ground red earth for a hundred thousand years. What that proves about the origins of cosmetics is narrower than usually claimed. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/kohl-galena-and-the-eye https://glowgazette.co.uk/making/kohl-galena-and-the-eye Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Ancient eye paint was mostly lead. Analysis of surviving samples produced one of the strangest findings in cosmetic history, and a durable myth. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/the-mirror-as-an-object https://glowgazette.co.uk/looking/the-mirror-as-an-object Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 For most of history a clear reflection of your own face was rare, expensive and small. What changed when it became cheap is genuinely debated. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/mourning-dress-and-adornment https://glowgazette.co.uk/customs/mourning-dress-and-adornment Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 For much of the nineteenth century, bereavement came with a written dress code, a shopping list and a timetable. It supported an entire industry. Glow Gazette https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/what-we-actually-know https://glowgazette.co.uk/received/what-we-actually-know Sat, 07 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Beauty history has a bad evidence problem. Here is how the bad claims are made, how they travel, and how to test one in about four minutes. Glow Gazette