Francois Boucher, "La Toilette" 1742
What was the must-have accessory for the style-conscious French courtier of the 17th century? Patches. Patches were made of black velvet, silk, or leather, and often cut into whimsical shapes like stars, circles, hearts, and moons. People stuck them to their faces with a sticky tree sap called gum mastic.
Both men and women wore patches. Smallpox, syphilis, and other dreaded diseases could leave the skin blemished, pitted, and permanently scarred, and patches could cover up the worst of the damage. But as the patch fad swept through France and other parts of Europe, people began wearing them to send messages. A woman wore a patch on her right cheek to let people know she was married. A patch near the mouth signified that a young woman was available for wooing. In England, at the height of the fad, members of one political party wore their patches on the left; another party wore them on the right. People carried around small boxes with extra patches in case one fell off, or to change them over the course of an evening, according to their whim.
Patch wearing persisted for nearly two hundred years. The craze declined by the end of the eighteenth century, coinciding with the introduction in 1798 of the smallpox vaccine, which led to a vast decrease in scarred and pitted faces in need of cover-up.
William Hogarth