The Belle Epoque definitely had an ideal of beauty, and the women who rose from quasi-or-actual prostitution to become acclaimed beauties and courtesans exemplified it.
Cleo de Nerode, a ballerina at the Paris Opera and later the Folies Bergere, who claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of a German aristocrat, and whose "postcards" were everywhere, was one of them.
That hairstyle, which she claimed to develop because she was growing out her fringe, but which one can also see in Renaissance portraits, became a sensation and was copied throughout France and the rest of Europe.
She was indeed beautiful.
Reminds me of the scandalous Evelyn Nesbit, although she needs to use lip rouge to try to make her mouth smaller. The famous architect Stanford White spent a fortune on her, plied her with drink, and ultimately took her virginity when she was only14. When she later told her multi-millionaire husband he shot White to death.
Also the famous actress Maude Feely...
Lina Cavalleri, not of the demi-monde, but a woman also celebrated for her beauty of whom postcasts were sold all over Europe.
