heavily made-up woman; flour-shop burglar
Archaic derogatory idiom literally meaning 'flour-shop burglar', used to mock a woman wearing thick white makeup, likening her face to a thief dusted with flour. Not in modern use.
The phrase 'flour-shop burglar' appears in Edo-period humorous books.
The expression is a figurative compound: 粉屋 (flour shop) + の (possessive) + 泥棒 (thief). The image is of a thief who has broken into a flour shop and is covered in white powder, used to ridicule a woman with excessive white face powder.