OTMA - smoking, make up and clothes

[Speedycat]

I have a photo of my grandmother and her school friends ( nurses school no less!) all posed with cigarettes in their hands.  She told me she never really smoked (maybe a puff or two) but that it was considered quite stylish, much like young ladies getting tatoos or piercings today.

On the subject of tatoos...wasn't this also a popular thing among Royal ladies in late Victroian times?

[Maria_Nikolaievna]

I've never heard about such a thing, though I suppose it's possible. Did they even have tattoos back then? Speedycat, could you please tell us where you've read about this?

  *~Mashka_Fan~*

[JediDeshka]

I don't see the cigarette in this photo! What about the other pictures of Tatiana and Olga smoking? I've never seen them before.

DeAnochka

[Romanov_fan]

Otma did smoke, I gather although people consider this unlikely because of the reputation it has today. Smoking back then was certainly not healthy, anymore than it is today, but they didn't know that. Smoking had a different reputation back then. So if you say they smoked, you can't say it means the same thing as today, when Otma smoking might be a big deal. To them, it was entirely different than us. If they had known it was unhealthy, it is hard to know if they would have done it.

[julia.montague]

Are there more Photos?

[Alicky1872]

On the subject of tatoos...wasn't this also a popular thing among Royal ladies in late Victroian times?

I know of at least two Royal women with tattoos...Queen Olga of Greece and Pss Marie d'Orleans (Pss Waldemar of Denmark) both had tattoos of anchors on their upper arms. Olga as she was the proud daughter of a sailor, and Marie because her husband was one.

[Nastya]

ive only ever seen pictures of olishka and nastya smoking. if it was very very fashionable then why cant people find pictures of tatiana smoking?

[Linnea]

On the subject of tatoos...wasn't this also a popular thing among Royal ladies in late Victroian times?

Empress Elisabeth of Austria also had a tatoo, a anchor on her schoulder. Franz Joseph was of course quite shocked!

[Sarastasia]

I've read that Anastasia started to smoke in 1917, and Olga would sometimes join her. They would walk around in the garden, secretly smoking as to keep it from their parents.

[penguin]

it wouldn't surprise me if they did smoke. as many people have already posted, it was stylish back then to be at least a social smoker. this is also a time where cocaine is thought of as a cure for a cold, which, at least one book has, that nicholas actually used cocaine for that purpose. so it wouldn't have been unusual if the entire family, except alexei, smoked.

[Sarastasia]

And plus, with all the stress of the revolution and such like, maybe Anastasia and Olga used it as a stress relief type thing.

[Cambria_Coheed]

Actually i believe that Anastasia started smoking in 1914 or 1915 because i found in a letter that she sent her father in 1915 she thanked him for sending her some cigarettes and that she smokes them with pleasure.

[Romanov_fan]

yes, they smoked which is a rather surprising image of them to have. But it was completely different back then than now. It may have been a form of stress relief during the revolution, and imprisonment. I suppose they still smoked then-does anyone know.

[Caleb]

Well it seems that many royals in Europe smoked, even in more recent times. King Edward VII, despite his parents' disaproval was a heavy smoker, more or less, smoking like a chimney! Supposedly from what I read, at one point he would smoke 6 cigars & 20 cigarettes a day! No wonder he got pneumonia! I also read that Queen Victoria smoked in her later years, something that she never would have done in the time that Prince Albert was around and certainly  not in her early widowhood. Also I read that King George VI smoked heavily, which had to do with his lung troubles & eventual early death. I also get the feeling that almost all the boys of King George & Queen Mary, except John, smoked.

[Margarita Markovna]

I can't see the image...