Empress Elisabeth of Austria - Beauty

Beauty

In addition to her rigorous exercise routines Elisabeth practised what could be called a true beauty cult, but one that was highly ascetic, solitary, and prone to bizarre, eccentric, and almost mystic routines. Daily care of her abundant and extremely long hair, which in the time turned from the dark blonde of her youth, to chestnut brown, took at least three hours. Her hair was so long and heavy that she often complained that the weight of the elaborate double braids and pins gave her headaches. Her hairdresser, Franziska Feifalik, was originally a stage hairdresser at the Wiener Burgtheater. Responsible for all of Elisabeth's ornate hairstyles, she always accompanied her on her wanderings. Feifalik was forbidden to wear rings and required to wear white gloves; after hours of dressing, braiding, and pinning up the Empress' tresses, the hairs that fell out had to be presented in a silver bowl to her reproachful empress for inspection. When her hair was washed with special "essences" of eggs and cognac once every two weeks, all activities and obligations were cancelled for that day. Before her son's death, she tasked Feifalik with tweezing gray hairs away, but at the end of her life her hair was described as "abundant, though streaked with silver threads."

Elisabeth used these captive hours during grooming to learn languages; she spoke fluent English and French, and added modern Greek to her Hungarian studies. Her Greek tutor described the ritual:

“Hairdressing takes almost two hours, she said, and while my hair is busy, my mind stays idle. I am afraid that my mind escapes through the hair and onto the fingers of my hairdresser. Hence my headache afterwards. The Empress sat at a table which was moved to the middle of the room and covered with a white cloth. She was shrouded in a white, laced peignoir, her hair, unfastened and reaching to the floor, enfolded her entire body.”

Unlike other women of her time, Elisabeth used little cosmetics or perfume, as she wished to showcase her "natural" beauty, but she tested countless beauty products prepared in the court pharmacy, or prepared by a lady-in-waiting in her own apartments, to preserve it. Although one favorite, "Crème Céleste", was compounded from white wax, spermaceti, sweet almond oil, and rosewater; she attached far less importance to creams and emolients, and experimented with a wide variety of facial tonics and waters, from which she apparently expected more results. Elisabeth slept without a pillow on a metal bedstead, all the better to retain her upright posture, with either raw veal or crushed strawberries lining her nightly leather facial mask. She was heavily massaged and often slept with cloths soaked in either violet- or cider-vinegar above her hips to preserve her slim waist, and her neck was wrapped with cloths soaked in Kummerfeld-toned washing water. To further preserve her skin tone, she took both a cold shower every morning (which in later years aggravated her arthritis) and an olive oil bath in the evening.

After age thirty-two, she did not sit for any more portraits, and would not allow any photographs of her to be taken, so that her public image of the eternal beauty would not be challenged. The few photographs that were taken without her knowledge show a woman who was “graceful, but almost too slender”.