Make your point

Beauty, power and moles: that's what most femmes fatales share. Like an exclamation mark, a mole instantly spices up one's look. Be it close to the eyes, under the lip or on the decolletage, it's a kind of warning sign saying, "Hey, look here, you won't regret it!" How could we forget the glamorous beauty marks of Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe? They truly made their faces iconic.

But did you know these tiny dots might also have foretold their destiny? According to the Chinese ancestral art of face reading (mian xiang), moles are the signature of the planets at birth and contain one's future. For instance, black and red ones are seen as good omens, whereas brown and dull ones are ominous signs. Placed on the eyebrow, a mole might be a highly auspicious sign of wealth and longevity, while a hidden one vouches for the existence of a secret treasure. Experts in moleomancy even claim that Monroe's glamorous spot foreshadowed her accident - which, of course, is easy to say in hindsight.

The 18th-century French courtesans also paid a lot of attention to the location of their moles. Known as mouches (the French word for "flies"), these fake beauty marks were wildly popular back then. Made of silk, velvet, taffeta or leather, they came in many shapes - round, heart, spade, star or crescent moon. Like fans and flowers, they also had their own seductive language. Depending on the location, these patches had a specific name and significance - above the lip it was "the coquette", on the side of the chin "the discreet", on the forehead "the majestic" and close to the eyes "the assassin". In England, moles even revealed a woman's political allegiance: the Tories set it on the left, the Whigs on the right. Apart from this, moles were primarily used for beauty. They often had a dual ambition of showing off a nice feature, and of concealing pimples and smallpox scars.