Men over the years have reportedly become more and more fashion conscious. Whether this is buying the latest moisturiser to help keep their skin soft and supple or perhaps kitting themselves out with some Farah Shirts from a company like www.ejmenswear.com/men/farah/ men are seemingly taking more pride in their appearance
However, if you trawl through the history books you will find that this has pretty much always been the case.
- Men were the first people to wear make-up. This dates back over 10,000 years ago when the men in tribes would wear camouflage and paints on their face to catch animals or to face a battle with an opposing tribe. These face paintings were more about instilling fear into others than it was about a beauty regime. In Egyptian times kings and pharaohs would were bright eye shadow. King Tutankhamun used a vivid shade of green. Green was thought to please the sky and sun gods. Also, in China in around 3000 BC men would wear nail polish to indicate their higher status.
- Shaving used to be fraught with danger and a cut from the blade would result in more than embarrassment because you forgot to remove the tiny bit of tissue paper before you walked into the office. There were numerous cases of men dying from infections that set in following a cut that wasn’t properly cleaned. Lockjaw was a very common illness caused by an infected wound.
- Pink originally started off as a man’s colour and back in the 18th Century men would wear silk suits in pink that were embroidered with flowers. These suits symbolised the man’s social standing and they often took up high powered positions and commanded great respect. It wasn’t until the 1960s that gender specific colours for babies was introduced and moved pink away from a high status male colour to that of baby girls.
- High heels began with men too. Back in Egyptian times the men in high positions would wear high heels to stand apart from all the other men who would be bare foot. Images of this can be seen in hieroglyphs. Butchers in particular would spend much of their day in high heels so as to step over the carcasses that lay around. For years men would wear heeled shoes until the platform shoes became an incredible hit in the 1970s.
