Sisi's Waist, Hair and Beauty Regime

Empress Elisabeth was 1.73 m tall — unusually tall for a woman of her time — and held her weight at around 50 kg for most of her adult life. At the narrowest point, during 1859 and 1860, her waist measured 40 cm. The clothes that survive from the rest of her life measure 47 to 49.5 cm at the waist, which prompted the Prince of Hesse to describe her as “almost inhumanly slender”.

Those numbers are the reason this page exists, and they are also the smallest part of the story.

The measurements, and what was behind them

The 40 cm waist belongs to a specific and miserable period. It coincided with Franz Joseph’s military defeats in Italy, with her withdrawal from her husband after three pregnancies in rapid succession, and with a losing battle against her mother-in-law over the raising of her own children. The tightlacing was the one thing in that year she could control.

Ordinary corsets of the period fastened up the front with hooks and eyes. Elisabeth had more rigid, solid-fronted ones made in Paris out of leather — “like those of Parisian courtesans” — presumably because cloth would not survive the strain. Lacing her in sometimes took the best part of an hour. She wore the leather ones only for a few weeks, which suggests even leather was not equal to it.

By August 1862 a lady-in-waiting could report that she ate properly, slept well and no longer tight-laced. She never went back to 40 cm. She also never went above about 50 kg without intervening: whenever the scale threatened it, a “hunger cure” followed — near-total fasting, or the juice of half-raw beefsteaks squeezed into a thin soup, or a diet of milk and eggs. Meat itself often disgusted her.

In her last years it got worse. She weighed herself up to three times a day, took steam baths to prevent weight gain, and by 1894 was down to 43.5 kg.

There were also episodes that look like binge eating. In 1878 she astonished her travelling companions by walking incognito into a restaurant and eating a broiled chicken and an Italian salad with champagne, finishing with a considerable quantity of cake. In 1881 she bought an English country house and had a spiral staircase built from her sitting room down to the kitchen, so she could get there unobserved.

Historians have read the pattern plainly. Walter Vandereycken, a professor of psychology, has written that “numerous documents repeatedly describe her considerable fear of weight gain and the psychopathological changes specific for anorexia nervosa.”

The hair

Daily care of her hair reportedly took several hours. It darkened from blonde in youth to chestnut brown, and it was worn in elaborate braids. She complained that its weight gave her headaches and used ribbons to tie it to the ceiling or to wall hooks to take the pull off her scalp.

Her hairdresser was Franziska Feifalik, recruited from the Burgtheater, where she had been a stage hairdresser. Feifalik travelled with her almost everywhere. She was forbidden to wear rings and required to wear white gloves, and after every session the hairs that had come out had to be presented to the Empress in a silver bowl for inspection.

Washing was a two-weekly event using a mixture of eggs and cognac, and every obligation in the diary was cancelled for that day.

Elisabeth used the captive hours to study languages — she spoke fluent English and French and added modern Greek to her Hungarian. Her Greek tutor, Constantine Christomanos, recorded her own account of it:

“Hairdressing takes almost two hours, and while my hair is busy, my mind stays idle. I am afraid that my mind escapes through the hair and onto the fingers of my hairdresser. Hence my headache afterwards.”

He described the setting too: a table moved into the middle of the room and covered with a white cloth, the Empress shrouded in a white laced peignoir, her hair unfastened and reaching the floor, enfolding her entire body.

The rest of the regime

She used cosmetics and perfume sparingly, preferring to showcase what she had. But she tested a great many products made up in the court pharmacy or by a lady-in-waiting in her own rooms. Her favourite appears to have been Crème Céleste — white wax, spermaceti, sweet almond oil and rose water.

The night routine was the strangest part. She slept without a pillow on a metal bedstead, believing it better for her posture. Her nightly leather facial mask was lined with either raw veal or crushed strawberries. She was heavily massaged, and often slept with cloths soaked in violet or cider vinegar above her hips to preserve her waist; her neck was wrapped in cloths soaked in Kummerfeld washing water. Every morning a cold shower, which in later years aggravated her arthritis. Every evening an olive-oil bath.

She never wore petticoats or any other underlinen, because they added bulk, and was often literally sewn into her clothes to avoid waistbands and creases.

The disappearing act

Elisabeth developed an aversion to being photographed and was quick with a fan or a sunshade to stop anyone taking her portrait. The well-known claim that she refused all images after the age of 32 is repeated everywhere; the sources we could check record the aversion and its lateness but not a specific age, so we are not going to give you one.

The effect is the same either way. Almost every image of Elisabeth in wide circulation shows a woman under thirty-five, which is part of why the legend has stayed so fixed.

What you see in the museum

The Sisi Museum in the Hofburg is built on exactly this material: the measurements, the regime, and the gap between the woman and the image. Her exercise room survives in the Imperial Apartments — the gymnastic rings and wall bars are part of the route, not a reconstruction.

Go in knowing that the museum’s stated purpose is to argue with the 1950s films, and the beauty regime is its best evidence.