ent in all societies and in all eras. Everyone wants to be the perfect image of the time and in the Elizabethan era they helped achieve that ideal through the means of serious make-up. The ideal of the era was to be pale skin, with scarlet coloured lips and checks, with fair hair (Leed 1). All these ideals could be achieved with the use of pigments but pigmenting was very expensive. The wealthy enjoyed the fact that they were the only ones in their society who could spare the time and afford the procedures it took to fit the ideal, and this was on purpose. The ideal Elizabethan should not only be pretty but she should be respected and rich and that should only be obtainable by the wealthy, for if everyone could achieve it, the drastic separation between the upper and lower classes would be loss and once everyone can reach the ideal the ideal changes. This desire to be young and beautiful effected Elizabethan fashion drastically. For the desire to be the ideal was also expressed through what they wore. For the ideal women in society wore cloths that decreased her size and made her the spitting image of beauty. Societies standings in Elizabethan times were directly related to wealth. Members who where included in the upper class society were able to display their flare for fashion as well as wealth through the use of accessories, jewelry, the decoration of their cloths and most importantly the styles of clothing they wore. With the new founding's of the time the wealthy was able to extenuate their flare through beautiful embro...
