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Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil
This is a purely spontaneous idea, backed up by shoddy memory if anything. Maybe they carried the ability to look beautiful up until they had commited irrevocable evil, thereby damning themselves?
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I don't think it was a matter of magnitude of evil, but a matter of loss of power, although ultimately they are connected. For Melkor, some "power had gone out of him" when he stole the silmarils and destroyed the trees - plus, he already spent a good deal of it before he was imprisoned, by becoming incarnate and by corrupting Arda. For Sauron, rebuilding a new body took too much power also. Therefore, both decayed from their initial status, where they could choose their "raiments".