What was the powder in powered wigs? And why?

Factual Questions
1

I always wondered what “powdered wig” meant until I saw Dangerous Liaisons. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094947/) When the French aristocrat Valmont gets up in the morning/afternoon/whatever, he picks out a wig, puts it on, and then covers his face with a mask while his servants spray powder on it with a kind of squeeze-bulb arrangement. Which raises two questions:

  1. What was that powder? Talcum powder? Corn starch? Was it the same as the powder with which they adorned their faces? (I read in an account of early 19th Century culture, The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson, that a gentleman would make himself up with powder and then scrape off the excess with a “powder knife”; this custom survived until shortly after the Napoleonic Wars.)

  2. Why did they use it? What was the purpose of powdering a wig? (Or one’s face?)

2

Starch, plaster of Paris, chalk, along with perfume or some kind of scent. Face powder was usually lead based (although sometimes starch based powder was used)and made differently than wig powder.

Why’d they do it? It was fashionable. Do you need any other reasons? :slight_smile: Besides, powdered wigs smelled nice, and face powder covered up things like smallpox scars.

3

I’ve head that white flour was used; only wasn’t that something of an expensive luxury in pre-industrial days?

4
      • I seem to remember that the powder was mainly intended to keep fleas/lice from biting. Of course they wanted it to smell nice also, but it wasn’t simply perfume.
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