Random beauty fact of the day…
It’s Friday afternoon, we’re cruising the net looking for funny little facts to ease you through the last hours of ‘work’ and look what we stumbled upon!
In Victorian times, gentlemen used to style their hair with Macassar oil, made from coconut or palm oil mixed with ylang ylang oil, and so named because it was said to be made from ingredients bought in the port of Makassar, Indonesia. Byron apparently called it “thine incomparable oil, Macassar’ and he was mad, bad etc etc (in short, a prime male-model-Monday candidate).
So…. these natty chaps would leave oily stains on the high backs of those uncomfortable armchairs so beloved of our humourless ancestors – gross, right? And lo, from the 1850s, dinky white lace-trimmed doilies started appearing to protect aforementioned back-of-armchair and they were christened… antimacassars! Anti-macassar – as in oil! Get it?!