What is the Golden Ratio?

THOUGHT up around 2,500 years ago, the Golden Ratio is a mathematical formula for beauty.

It involves taking two measurements – and one distance being 1.618 times bigger than the other is considered ideal.

When applied to faces, an example would be measuring the width of the nose and the width of the mouth, and the mouth should be 1.618 times wider than the nose. A beautiful face will have many examples of the golden ratio when you compare lots of different measurements.

Leonardo Da Vinci is thought to have used the ratio to draw Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man, while Marilyn Monroe was close to fitting the ratio. It can also apply to buildings and objects, and is thought to have been used to build the Parthenon in Athens in the 5th century BC, and to design the Aston Martin.