ABSTRACT
The women's fashion of wearing patches was passed on from Great Britain during the final days of the reign of Charles I to the English Colonies in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas. One historian, Elizabeth McClellan, notes a reference to them in 1650: their ladies have lately entertained a vain custom of spotting their faces out of affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty such as Venus had; and it is well if one black patch will serve to make their faces remarkable, for some fill their faces full of them, varied into all manner of shapes. Patches remained popular well into George III's day, receiving further impetus from their association with the practice of powdering the hair. In fact, such satirical lines may well have reflected the beginnings of a large-scale public reaction against the patches vogue.
