Officine Universelle Buly presents: Ancient Beauty Rituals

In the 11th century, the enchanting Berber queen Zaynab Nefzaouia mastered the art of commercial and political negotiation. Today, she tells us about her expansion plans for the Almoravid empire. Its territory included Morocco, the Western Sahara, Mauritania, part of modern Mali and western Algeria, as well as the south of the Iberian Peninsula. There was no city worthy of this empire. Accompanied...

The legendary Ching Shih, nicknamed "Queen of the Pirates", is no fictional character! Born in China in 1775, Ching Shih, whom legend has it was once a prostitute, was in fact the terror of merchant ships in the China Sea in the early 19th century. A true military genius, when her pirate husband died, she took command of 40,000 men, some say 80,000. Her insatiable thirst for power made her a formi...

The Mongols are regarded as the greatest conquerors in history: Genghis Khan's empire stretched from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean, including Far Eastern Europe, the Near East, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Russian steppes and part of Siberia as far as the Baltic Sea, northern India, Mongolia and the whole of China. That's more than 20% of the world's land! An un...

The Ottoman Empire, multinational and multilingual, at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries, was powerful both financially and intellectually. The Sultan possessed a harem of the most beautiful women in the empire, who benefited from the best teaching in dance, poetry, music and erotic art. Concubines were pampered, adorned with the finest jewels and the finest clothe...

The 1920s in the United States saw a resurgence of African-American culture in all creative fields, and the birthplace of this revival was Harlem, New York. It was also a time of blossoming for African-American women, who emancipated themselves from the diktats of beauty long reserved for white women. C.J. Walker, the daughter of a slave, illiterate and self-taught, was the ultimate icon, becoming...

In this episode, we tell you about the beauty ritual of a great samurai in Japan in 1730.  Bathing has a religious significance in Japanese culture. As well as being hygienic, it serves to cleanse the soul. Numerous onsen (natural hot springs) and sento (public baths widely available) gave everyone access to ablutions. Before important ceremonies with religious or social significance, such as...

In this episode, we shine the spotlight on a ritual that is not just for women, but for a change, for men. We visit Souverain Raya, in the south of India, at the very beginning of the 16th century. This was an area prolific in spices, used for culinary, medical and cosmetic purposes, whose value could approach that of gold. In the "best provisioned city in the world", King Raya took as much care o...

Justine takes us by the hand and leads us to the Centre-West of France in 1863. More precisely, to the Aurillac ball, a vibrant dancing performance on which the curtains of our story open. But no ball is complete without a preceding beauty ritual. After a long day on the farm, Justine walks hastily back to the house and invites us to plunge headlong into the intimacy of rural grooming in the 19th...

In this episode, we reveal a beauty ritual practised in Rajasthan, India, in the early 19th century.  Troubled by the English romanticism that offered her a glimpse of Western freedom, young princess Alka found appeasement in a meticulous series of vigorous head and body massages, and in the famous Indian ablutions ceremonial.  In the form of a tale, Buly tells you all about this ritual,...

In this first episode, we reveal the beauty rituals in vogue in ancient Rome, following a young noblewoman, Cassia, in her cosmetic routine, with Phoebe, her favorite ornatrix. If their complexion was generally damaged by poor hygiene, illness or the composition of their makeup,  The Romans were on the other hand renowned for the great care they took with their appearance, thanks to necessari...

Do you know how makeup was applied in ancient Rome? What was the legendary aura that allowed African-American women to beautify themselves in Harlem in the 1930s? Can the mystery of steam baths be unravelled? What were the beauty and skin care rituals practiced in France during the Second Empire? Constantinople, Okinawa or Rajasthan, these ancestral rituals are at the origin of our own contemporar...