Content warning: mention of suicide in the 3rd to last paragraph.
I wish I was sharing something uplifting instead of tragic, but I wanted to discuss a very talented writer who contributed much to the beauty industry during her short life. Mona Manet debuted her eponymous line of cosmetics in 1941 in her New York City salon. Soon the brand rolled out nationwide, and Manet enjoyed a brief career as a salon owner, makeup artist and beauty columnist. However, she was harboring a big secret: while Mona Manet presented herself as white, she was in fact a Black woman who had adopted a new identity and a new name to go with it.
Mona Manet was born as Elsie Roxborough in Detroit, MI, in 1914 into a prominent Black family. Her father Charles was a Detroit College of Law graduate who owned a weekly paper, the Detroit Guardian, and also served as a state senator. Her biracial mother, Cassandra, sadly died while delivering Elsie’s younger sister, Virginia, in 1917. Roxborough was the first Black woman to live in the dorms at the University of Michigan, largely due to her father’s efforts to fight discrimination on campus. However, it was not without struggle. Roxborough was alienated by most of her fellow Black students, who perceived her cultured upbringing as snobbish. But she was not fully accepted by whites either. Says Kathleen Hauke, who wrote a thorough profile of Roxborough in 1984 for the Michigan Quarterly Review: “Her [wealth] produced a tension between Roxborough and other blacks on campus who had not enjoyed her privileges. To white students she was an exotic, not like other Negroes yet not like themselves either.” Being rejected by both races was perhaps one of many reasons for Roxborough’s decision to live as a white woman.
Despite these obstacles, Roxborough’s gift for writing flourished. She wrote for the campus paper alongside classmate Arthur Miller and established a theater troupe, the Roxane Players, for whom she wrote her own plays. In 1937 she worked with Langston Hughes to produce his play Drums of Haiti. She and Hughes began a professional relationship/friendship. In his autobiography, Hughes remembers, “Elsie would tell me about her dreams, and wonder whether or not it would be better for her to pass as white to achieve them. From what I knew of the American entertainment field and how [Blacks] were almost entirely excluded from the directorial or technical aspects of it, I agreed with her that it was difficult for any [Black] person to gain entrance except as a performer…and for a [Black] woman I think it would be even more difficult than a man. Elsie was often mistaken for white in public places, so it would be no trouble at all for her to pass as white. While I was in Spain she wrote me that she had made up her mind to do so. She intended to cease being [Black].” The meteoric rise of boxer Joe Louis, whose was managed by Roxborough’s uncle John, was perhaps the last straw for her in terms of living as a Black woman and the impetus for pursuing a career in beauty. Hauke suggests, “The rejection of her plays by critics and judges contrasted with the nearly incredible success of Uncle John’s golden boy. If making it as a Black in America demanded masculine brute strength, she would flee to the genteel white world in which a woman’s arts would be appreciated.” Roxborough dyed her hair from black to auburn and moved to California, taking the name Pat Rico and working as a model. After less than a year on the West coast she relocated again, this time to New York City. It’s not clear exactly when she adopted the Mona Manet name, but most likely it was around late 1939-early 1940.* It’s also unclear as to when she opened her salon at 48 East 52nd St, but it seems that is where she got her start in beauty. Over the next decade Roxborough would manage her salon, release a cosmetics line, write for a number of publications and serve as makeup artist to models and actresses for various fashion shows, press events and theatrical productions.
In February 1941 several trade publications reported on the Mona Manet cosmetics line, which was distributed nationwide later that year.
It was the packaging that caused me to purchase the lipstick and rouge on eBay. I knew absolutely nothing about Elsie Roxborough or Mona Manet, but the font of the signature was intriguing. At first glance the style appears somewhat ‘80s, but the bakelite packaging and size made me realize it had to be ‘30s or ‘40s. The lipstick is the shade Samba and the rouge is Rebel Red.
Here’s an eyeshadow which for some reason slipped by my radar. I will be forever heartbroken over not adding it to the Museum’s collection.Update, March 2025: As I was packing up the Museum’s collection to move to new headquarters, I found the eyeshadow!! Apparently I had purchased it and it somehow got separated from the rouge and lipstick.
The violet eyeshadow was part of the Mona Manet “duration” makeup collection, which she originally used on the Ziegfeld Follies girls. Meant to be a delicate, feminine contrast to “severe uniforms” of women in the military and worn for the duration of the war, the collection consisted of the following: “a new orchid-pink shade, a baby-blue eyeshadow for use over the lids with a violet shadow graduating towards the brows, along with an ethereal face powder over all.” The rouge and lipstick were appropriately named “Manet Pink”.
Roxborough’s advice and techniques were largely in keeping with the others of the time. She did have some unique tactics, however, including applying a very heavy face of makeup and removing most of it. According to Roxborough, this technique resembled the Chinese art of flower arranging in which a large bouquet is gathered and one flower at a time is removed until “the most piquant and satisfying effect has been accomplished.” Indeed, Roxborough seemed to have an affinity for Chinese culture, creating several hairstyles inspired by those worn by Chinese women and launching a beauty oil that she claimed was based on an ancient Chinese practice of using oil instead of a cream/lotion to moisturize both face and body. At times, she also used Chinese calligraphy brushes to apply lip and eye products. Chinese dignitaries, including a military captain, attended the opening of the new department in her salon, the Lotus Room, in September 1943. The event presented “an original kind of beauty demonstration stressing the Chinese influence in this year’s Fall styles…it is Miss Manet’s idea that Chinese make-up devices can be added to our American concept of beauty.”
She was also known for quick, streamlined beauty routines. In late 1942 the Associated Press reported on a beauty demonstration on 5 women by Roxborough and her salon workers. All of the women were serving in the military and had little time for treatments; however, as the mantra for American women during WWII was “beauty is your duty”, it was expected that all women, whether in the military or civilians, were to be perfectly coiffed and made up at all times. While the routines described in the article seem ridiculously long by today’s standards, in reality they were pretty quick: one factory worker had “a scalp treatment, shampoo and rinse, hair style, manicure, pedicure, clean-up facial and makeup which took only 64 ½ minutes.” The Lotus Room, in addition to being Chinese-inspired, offered much the same speedy, “assembly line” routine. Clients could get the “main essentials” of a shampoo, wave, manicure and makeup in 50 minutes. Interestingly, the concept of head-to-toe service would be greatly enhanced in several Black-owned salons, including the Rose Meta House of Beauty and Carmen Murphy’s House of Beauty, a few years later. This is entirely speculative, but I wonder if Rose Morgan and Roxborough were aware of each other as Roxborough occasionally socialized in Harlem, where the Rose Meta salon was located. And perhaps Carmen Murphy was aware of Roxborough’s salon as she set up shop in Roxborough’s hometown of Detroit, where she was still in touch with family there.
Finally, as Mona Manet, Roxborough was one of the earliest makeup artists who advocated for the use of a lip brush to apply lipstick. This practice would become hugely popular later in the 1940s and throughout the next decade (stay tuned for a post on Martha Lorraine lip brushes and other gadgets for a defined lip in the 1950s.)
In between operating the salon and providing makeup artistry for fashion shows and plays, Roxborough wrote ad copy and columns for a multitude of brands and publications beginning in 1945. In July of that year she was hired to be director of cosmetics for Lucien Lelong, but just two months later, she assumed the role of cosmetic editor at American Druggist, listed as “formerly” of Lucien Lelong. At American Druggist she wrote such pieces as “How to Be a Cosmetician” and “Classroom for Cosmeticians: Summer Cosmetics.” In February 1946 she began writing for Fascination magazine in addition to American Druggist, but left Fascination in March 1947, most likely because it folded. Less than a year after that, in February 1948 Women’s Wear Daily announced that Mona Manet had left American Druggist and was appointed as publicity director to Chen Yu, a company known primarily for nail polish (and rampant appropriation and stereotyping of Chinese culture, which may have aligned with Roxborough’s interest in Chinese fashion and beauty.) All of this job-switching suggests another mystery – was it simply the nature of the industry for workers to constantly be moving from one company to the next, or was Roxborough concerned about her true identity being found out and felt the need to move frequently to keep any suspicions at bay? But given how closely connected the industry was (and still is), this doesn’t seem plausible. If she was found out, word would spread quickly so there wasn’t much of a point in moving on to new positions.
All of Roxborough’s success as a beautician could not compensate for what was most likely a lonely existence. She had to be very careful about being seen in public with her Black friends in the city as well as her family when they came to visit, and mitigating public appearances meant seeing the people she was closest to infrequently. She lived with a white roommate, and all of her colleagues in the beauty world knew her as white. Her career would effectively be over and even her personal safety could be at risk if it was discovered she was Black. At the same time, while Roxborough was not estranged from her family, they were reportedly less than pleased with her decision to live as a white woman. Once again, Roxborough was unable to be fully embraced by either whites or the Black community. It could have been the inability to ever feel truly accepted that led to Roxborough’s fatal overdose of sleeping pills on October 2, 1949. Whether her death was intentional or accidental we will never know, but her family believed it was an accident, their reasoning being that she did not leave a note. They held a small, private funeral for her, and while the Michigan Chronicle ran the headline “Elsie Roxborough Dies,” her death certificate listed her as white. No one in New York City was made aware that she was Black.
The larger topic of racial “passing” and its implications are far beyond the scope of this post, especially as I’d like to focus on Roxborough’s role in cosmetics history. I personally think Roxborough could have gone to New York as a Black woman and become a hugely successful beauty entrepreneur who was able to meet the needs of Black customers as Sara Spencer Washington, Madame C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone did before her. Or she could have continued passing as white and pursued a beauty career even further than she did. She was described by her colleagues as an “up-and-coming young beautician with an important future” and “one of the most gifted writers in the cosmetic realm.” Black or white, she was quite talented at makeup and hair in addition to writing. But it seems that she did not engage in the beauty realm out of genuine interest. Instead, perhaps Roxborough saw being a white beauty expert as a way to get closer to her true passion, which was playwriting. Providing the makeup and hair styles for performers/models at fashion shows and coordinating corporate beauty presentations was getting her foot in the door – maybe she thought that if she could prove herself more than capable of managing these types of productions, she could break into writing and directing high theater more easily. Having been mostly shut out of that world as a Black woman previously, living as white and overseeing various skits and performances (which she was doing as of 1947 – her credits for most shows had changed to “written and staged by Mona Manet”) allowed her a better shot at achieving her dream of being a serious playwright.
In any case, I hope this post makes clear that Roxborough contributed significantly to makeup history, no matter how she identified racially. It also serves as a reminder of the enormity of white privilege, and that while the beauty industry afforded more opportunities for both Black and white women, the playing field was and remains uneven along race and gender lines.
*The Mona Manet name for cosmetics was patented in March 1941 with a claims use date of December 28, 1940, so Roxborough was most likely using the name throughout 1940.
Sources
Advertisement, Harper’s Bazaar, vol. 75, iss. 2765, May 1942, 18.
American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, October 1943, 52.
American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, December 1945, 54-55.
American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, January 1948, 79.
Donna Davis, “Beauty for Sale: Everything New in Beauty,” Hit Parader, December 1942, 22.
Annette Donnelly, “Beauty in a Hurry: This Speedup Era Takes Its Turn at Charm, Too,” Daily News (New York), August 23, 1943.
Drug and Cosmetic Industry, volume 57, issue 1, July 1945, 81.
Ruth Finley, “Fashion Calendar”, September 3, 1943, 3.
Helen Flynn, “Christmas Counterpoints,” Town & Country, vol. 97, iss. 4243, December 1942, 44.
Kathleen A. Hauke, “The ‘Passing’ of Elsie Roxborough,” Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 1984, 155-170.
Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015 edition (originally published in 1956).
Jacqueline Hunt, “Make-up Keyed to Hair-do for Most Flattering Effect,” Anadarko Daily News, April 8, 1941.
Martha Parker, “Bigger Imports of Needed Tropical Oils for Lip Rouge Made Possible by Navy,” New York Times, November 16, 1943.
Gayle Wald, Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, 82-84.
“Miss Manet with Chen Yu,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 20, 1948, 30.
I was trying in vain to catch up on some beauty news many moons ago and came across this article at Who What Wear – yet another on the history of red lipstick. There were a lot of things that bothered me about it, but the number one offense was the doubling down on the myth of Elizabeth Arden handing out lipstick to suffragettes during a 1912 march in New York City. After recognizing this claim’s veracity was murky at best, the article’s author stated, “I wanted to know more, so I went straight to the source: Elizabeth Arden, the very same global beauty brand founded by the namesake cosmetics maven.” A brand can certainly be used as a source, provided there are legitimate historical records that serve as evidence for their claims. However, in this piece there were many statements made by Janet Curmi, VP of global education and development at Elizabeth Arden, without anything to back them up. “On November 9, 1912, 20,000 women took to the streets of New York to advocate for the right to vote. Elizabeth Arden, a dedicated suffragette herself, opened the doors of her New York spa to hand out her Venetian Lip Paste and Venetian Arden Lip Pencil, before joining the suffragettes marching down Fifth Avenue as a sign of solidarity. The most striking sight was the bold red color on the women’s lips.” The accompanying photo shows suffragettes marching at the May 4, 1912 event (not November)…with nary a one wearing visible lip color. Just for funsies I reviewed some news coverage on the November march.* As with the May march, they describe quite a few details, including the exact route and the women’s clothing, but lipstick is not among any of them.
I am very interested to know where Curmi got this information. Arden wasn’t, in fact, particularly known as a “dedicated suffragist.” The legend of her providing lipsticks to marching suffragettes goes back to at least 1999 and names the May 4 rally (see Lucy Jane Santos’s outstanding effort to unravel its history, along with my findings), so November 9 appears to be a new twist on the mythos. Another addition is the reference to Venetian Lip Paste and Pencil specifically being given to suffragettes. As far as I can tell, no particular products were mentioned in the Arden suffragette story until 2021, when author Louise Claire Johnson published a book entitled Behind the Red Door: How Elizabeth Arden’s Legacy Inspired My Coming-of-Age Story in the Beauty Industry. Johnson states that Arden provided Venetian Lip Paste and pencil to the crowds at the November march, but does not cite an exact source: “However, six months later, on November 9, 1012, Elizabeth could no longer sit idly by in silence. Shuttering the salon for the day, she took to the streets and joined 20,000 women, double the size of the previous parade, and advocated for the right to vote. The most striking sight was the bold red color on the women’s lips, as they vibrantly spoke their truth. Elizabeth weaved among the masses handing out her Venetian Lip Paste and Venetian Arden lip pencil in deep red – the original ‘lip kit’. In history, it is often the slightest gestures that become revolutionary. The red lip kits were small, yet mighty weapons – a red pout in place of a middle finger against the patriarchy. Red lips were still considered illicit and immoral, so the women wore them in unison as a rebellious emblem of emancipation. Makeup was no longer a sign of sin but of sovereignty.” (p. 63-64)
While it’s been confirmed that Arden had a line of “Venetian” skincare products by 1912, her lip makeup products were still in development. There was a Venetian Lip Salve advertised in Vogue, but I’m guessing it was a clear or slightly tinted balm and not “paint”, and I could not find any mention of Venetian Lip Paste/Pencil until 1919. Additionally, 2 pages after her claim of the paste and pencil being being handed out, Johnson seems to contradict herself by stating that “after the suffrage parade, [Arden] started introducing makeup products into her Venetian skincare line.” So if the makeup was not introduced until after the parade, how was it handed out? It’s entirely possible Arden was making a prototype of these lip items available through her salons – most likely she was mixing up limited, small batches of makeup to select clients who requested it – but no ads, trademark, etc. for Venetian Lip Paste and Lip Pencil prior to 1919 seem to exist, which leads one to believe that they were not being mass produced and able to be distributed to thousands of people. Perhaps any records relating to the origins of Venetian Lip Paste and Lip Pencil and for that matter, any records of Arden giving them out at a rally are in the mysterious “Elizabeth Arden papers”, which, as one historian explains, are scattered about across the U.S. and not readily available. Still, I find it curious that the company has never provided any documentation that Arden handed out lipstick, and specific products at that. I also reached out to Behind the Red Door’s author – twice – asking for her to clarify where she came across the story of the Venetian lip products and did not receive a reply.
Curmi further embellishes the tale by remarking that mostly because of Arden, suffragette leaders began to wear red lipstick as well. “While turn-of-the-century actresses like Sarah Bernhardt and Mary Pickford helped to bring red lipstick into vogue in 1912, it was Elizabeth Arden who gave it political power, elevating it to a symbol of rebellion and female empowerment…red lips were still considered illicit and immoral at the time, so the women wore them in unison as a rebellious emblem of emancipation and defiance. [Leaders] of feminist movements such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman began sporting red lips as a symbol of female empowerment. Since then, red lipstick has mirrored resilient femininity.” Once again, I’m going to direct you to Lucy’s article on the subject, where she points out that Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902. Continuing to wear lipstick 10 years after one’s death would be quite an impressive feat, no?
Finally, anyone who has researched makeup’s rise in the early 20th century understands there were many other factors at play in terms of how lipstick and other makeup became socially acceptable. Yes, wearing obvious makeup was certainly a seismic cultural shift and viewed as rebellious, but it cannot be credited to any one person or movement. “One of the first female entrepreneurs in 20th century America, Arden remarkably turned a $6000 investment into a billion-dollar brand. She opened the Red Door Spa on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1910 at a time when makeup and cosmetics were considered improper. She was instrumental in changing how the world thought about beauty—the ultimate influencer,” Curmi says. These statements demonstrate the pitfalls of letting a company executive guide the narrative instead of an actual historian, as a brand employee has a vested interest in presenting their business as groundbreaking rather than telling the truth. In this case, not only does Curmi offer no hard proof for the suffragette-related claim, she conveniently leaves out the contributions of other major “influencers” of the time, i.e. Helena Rubinstein, Max Factor and Madam C.J. Walker, to say nothing of smaller brands and figures, technological advances, and economic and political factors other than suffrage. Obviously these omissions make sense as her role is to promote the Arden brand and because the reporter reached out to Arden specifically and not other companies for this article, but they also make for a rather incomplete and biased snapshot of lipstick’s history.
Finally, the subject of makeup and political power is one for another time, but for the record, most early advertising marketed it as a way to better meet white supremacist beauty standards and continue enforcing compulsory heterosexuality rather than for any “empowering” purpose. Once again, nuance is wholly neglected in favor of pushing a feel-good story that serves primarily to buoy a company’s reputation.
I’m ending this post with several requests. For journalists, one: if you must interview brand representatives, please do not rely on them as a credible source for the stories you’re trying to get to the bottom of, unless they furnish documentation from the company’s archives or other legitimate pieces of evidence. Otherwise your article runs the risk of resembling a glorified ad rather than journalism. Two: please choose another makeup topic to cover besides red lipstick (or at least, an angle not focused on cis-het white women’s history). Maybe red lipstick’s fame and status as a “classic” means stories about it get more clicks, but makeup history is so incredibly varied and rich, many other subjects would be of interest to the general public. The last plea I’m making is for the Elizabeth Arden company to show the world a shred of historical evidence that their founder provided lipsticks to suffragettes. We’re still waiting.
*These were all from the New York Times: “400,000 Cheer Suffrage March,” Nov. 10 1912, p. 1; “New States to Lead in Suffrage Parade: Army of 20,000 Expected to Participate in Fifth Avenue Procession,” Nov. 9 1912, p. 22; “Torches in Hair to Guide Parade: Electric Novelties Planned for Tomorrow’s Big Suffrage Demonstration,” Nov. 8 1912, p. 7.
I admit I purchased this object without fully understanding what it was.
I couldn't unearth any ads for Opaline1 and very little exists about the company. There were a couple calls for De Baranta-Windsor salespeople in 1898 for totally different products – no mention of beauty preparations, so I had to rely on other clues to suss out what Opaline could possibly be. The substance appears to be a powder in the bottle, but there were a few reasons why I didn't believe it was a face powder upon closer inspection. Namely: 1. powders were normally packaged in boxes, not bottles; 2. the directions instructed the user to shake well and apply with a sponge, and powders did not usually require shaking and were applied with a puff; and 3. the directions also insinuated the product was a liquid by including the phrase "when nearly dry…".
So what exactly was Opaline? Certainly not perfume and most likely not a skincare treatment either. It was clearly some kind of liquid makeup (with the liquid obviously evaporating over time) but not quite foundation as we know it today. Thank goodness for Cosmetics and Skin, as I really didn't know what I was looking at until some frantic Googling led me to their website, which has an excellent summary of the three most common types of "liquid powders" popular at the turn of the 20th century: calamine, wet white and liquid pearl (not to be confused with pearl powder).
Liquid pearl was essentially white face powder mixed with water and glycerin. Despite its tendency to streak, it had several advantages over dry face powder, namely that it lasted longer and provided slightly more coverage. Although the powder component consisted of the same ingredients as face powder (usually zinc oxide or bismuth oxychloride), liquid pearl was used on the body in addition to the face, primarily for evening wear to impart an even, whitening effect on any exposed skin – ideal for the plunging necklines and short-sleeve styles of fin-de-siècle Europe and the U.S. It was also less frequently recommended as a sort of sunscreen for daytime due to the zinc. Sources detailing liquid pearl from the early 1900s align with Opaline. A 1904 recipe instructed the user to "Keep in a tightly corked bottle and apply with a sponge when required,"2 and in 1910 beauty columnist Margaret Mixter advised, "When bottled there will be a white sediment at the bottom, and the preparation must always be shaken before any is put on the face. In applying a piece of muslin or linen should be used."3 Opaline's name, color, packaging, and instructions perfectly match liquid pearl. Compare to others from the time, which were packaged in bottles and claimed to have a whitening effect.
I can't uncork the Opaline bottle due to its fragility, but I was very tempted to try to sprinkle out some powder to get a sense of the texture and opacity. Instead of potentially damaging or breaking the bottle, to sate my curiosity I decided to whip up a batch of liquid pearl using a common recipe – this one appeared in a column by Harriet Hubbard Ayer4 in 1902 and was reprinted in several other beauty guides: "pure oxide of zinc, 1 ounce; glycerine, one dram; rosewater, four ounces; essence of rose, fifteen drops. Sift the zinc, dissolving it in just enough of the rosewater to cover it, then add the glycerin, next the remainder of the rosewater. Shake well and apply with a soft sponge or antiseptic gauze." All ingredients were procured via Etsy.
My measuring may have been off, but the mixture ended up being very thin and watery.
I didn't have any cheesecloth on hand to strain it nor a pretty little bottle to put it in, but I did have plenty of travel containers. After a good shake I used my trusty Beauty Blender sponge (dampened) to apply a thin layer – I was also short on linen, muslin and gauze.
Once applied, it's actually not too dissimilar from today's zinc-based sunscreen lotion in that it leaves a pretty noticeable white cast, even with just a small amount on my pasty skin. Smelled lovely though! And the texture was surprisingly smooth and comfortable. Not as emollient as a lotion, but it didn't feel dry or like it was just sitting on top of my skin. I'm sparing you a photo, but I did try it on my face and neck in addition to my inner arm…looked quite ghostly. I also neglected to take a photo of it in the bottle a few hours after, when it had separated with all the zinc on the bottom – the instructions to shake well were definitely necessary.
Given its unnatural appearance – I can't imagine putting on more layers – I found myself wondering if liquid pearl was commonly worn. Whiteness was (is) highly prized as a beauty standard, and liquid pearl was one way to achieve it, albeit temporarily. As was the case for centuries, the starkness of ultra-white skin wasn't an issue despite being at odds with the "undetectable" makeup that middle-class women were expected to adhere to; the whiter, the better, especially according to ads for liquid pearl. A 1914 ad for a liquid powder called Derma Viva states, "It whitens the skin at once, a single application being most effective. Red, brown or dark complexion – face, neck, arms, and hands – made a beautiful milky white by use of this wonderful beautifier."
Judging from my experiment, liquid pearl doesn't seem like it would look remotely natural on even the palest of skin tones, but it appears whiteness trumped any concerns about liquid pearl's obviousness. It could also be that as there were so few formulations, liquid pearl and other liquid powders were relatively natural-looking by fin-de-siècle standards, or at least, that's what companies wanted customers to believe. Derma Viva notes that it is "absolutely invisible" and "will not show as does face powder," while Mme. Gage's Imperial Japanese White Lily, "a delicate liquid powder for evening use" was also advertised as invisible. "A successfully made-up woman does not look in the least artificial," proclaimed Mrs. Henry Symes, who then followed up this statement by a recipe for liquid pearl.5 Another column from 1903 advises using one of the new "flesh" tinted liquid powders instead of white, but notes that white powders were still preferable to the harshness of theatrical makeup. "Only a few years ago Milady was forced to be content with just two colors of face powder, chalk white and rose. Both of these were easily discernible, for they made her either too red or too pale…Not only are there fifteen tints of complexion powders, but they are put up in different forms to suit different occasions. There are liquid powders, which are to be 'shaken before taken'…at any big entertainment the women may be seen with their faces chalked till they resemble nothing so much as a company of corpses. These women do not bother about preparing the chalk; they simply take a chalk pencil and rub it into the skin with unction, and the more ghastly the result the better they are pleased."6 Given that every liquid pearl recipe dictated careful application with a sponge or other piece of cloth, it seems that as long as women were using it primarily for nighttime and paying attention to how and where they applied it, liquid pearl was an acceptable cosmetic for the average (white) woman.
We also can't discount the fact that electric lighting wasn't totally ubiquitous at the time and liquid pearl was mostly recommended for evening wear, so perhaps it was less obvious in darkened settings. In any case, while some cosmetic recipes hold up today and all the ingredients in this particular concoction are still used in contemporary cosmetics, it appears quite crude by comparison and is best left in the 1900s.
To conclude, I'm 99.9% sure Opaline is liquid pearl, but less certain is whether Mme. De Baranta was a real person. I am skeptical! Perhaps the Cortland Historical Society, which also has this artifact in their collection, could shed some light on the company.
What do you think of Opaline and liquid pearl? And have you ever tried DIY'ing makeup? Believe it or not, this was my first experiment despite all of the recipes that have been printed in various makeup history books and seeing it done numerous times before. I think recreating old formulas would be pretty fun Makeup Museum events. 😉
1There were several instances of liquid powders named Opaline from the late 1800s/early 1900s including one by UK-based Crown perfumery and the Opaline Toilet Manufacturing Company in San Francisco, but no Opaline from the De Baranta company.
2Emily Lloyd, "The Skin: Its Care and Treatment," (Chicago: MacIntosh Battery and Optical Co) 1904, 104-105. The story of this book's author is fascinating by itself – apparently Emily Lloyd was an alias used by Ruth Maurer, who established the Marinello company. Once again, Cosmetics and Skin has all the details.
4"Harriet Hubbard Ayer Responds to Many Inquiries Directed to the Sunday Post-Dispatch," The St. Louis Sunday Post Dispatch, May 25, 1902, 42.
5Mrs. Henry Symes, "How To Be Healthy and Beautiful: Use of Cosmetics for Improving the Complexion's Appearance – When It Is Justified," The Minneapolis Tribune, February 16, 1902. This entire column is a hoot – Symes basically calls out the hypocrisy of men judging women who wear makeup, and states that if they weren't so obsessed with certain beauty standards, women would not feel the need to wear makeup.
6"The True Uses of Powder for the Complexion," Evening Star (Washington, DC), Nov. 14, 1903, 32.
On average, the Museum receives one inquiry a week. It doesn’t seem like much, but if it’s something that can’t be identified easily or a broad question about historic trends, they can take up quite a bit of time. Here are a handful of inquiries I worked on over the past year or so.
First, we have some questions about wartime makeup. One of the Museum’s Instagram followers asked about this lovely set she had purchased on eBay. She suggested it may have been a kit provided to service women during the war.
The following week, by pure coincidence, another person got in touch with an identical kit in red.
As it turns out, the hunch from the tan kit’s owner was spot-on: this is Elizabeth Arden’s service kit, which dates to about 1939-1956. I don’t think the company provided them for free, but it seems like the kit with Stop Red was recommended specifically for the women in the Auxiliary Fire Service in the UK, at least initially. A book called the Home Front Pocket Manual contains an excerpt from the Nov. 1939 issue of a British publication called Britannia and Eve, and it mentions the set.
The kit was sold in Canada starting around 1942 and continued to be sold there into the 1950s, but was advertised just as a regular travel kit for the “busy” woman, not service women. It also looks like the red leather was not available until 1942. In any case, it’s a compelling piece of wartime women’s history – kits were actually created to help women adhere to the “beauty is your duty” motto.
So this was mostly solved…except for the number that appeared on both kits. If anyone knows what “R.D. 1941” means please get in touch. The only possibly relevant thing I found was “Reserve Decoration” which is an award for the Royal Navy Reserve in the UK, but it doesn’t seem like that would be appropriate to put on this particular kit. Update, September 2024: a very kind reader wrote and explained that R.D. most likely referred to Registered Design. That makes sense!
Next up, a vintage enthusiast and YouTuber, Katie May, asked about the use of gravy browning as leg makeup during the war. As silk and nylons were scarce, liquid leg makeup was sold as a substitute for stockings.
But in the UK, where shortages were even more dire and cosmetics prohibitively expensive, more women tried to DIY liquid stockings through a number of substances. According to some sources, ladies tested out a bunch of things to mimic the look of stockings. Along with gravy browning, cocoa, wet sand, tea, iodine, walnut juice and brown shoe polish were all experimented with. Katie wanted to know how the gravy was applied and whether it was a widespread trend. I’m afraid I couldn’t turn up much concrete information given the limited access I have to resources, not to mention I know very little of where to begin looking for sources on WWII history in the UK. This BBC archive provides a brief 1st person mention of the stockings, but my findings consisted mostly of newspaper snippets and book excerpts, which may not be reliable and don’t provide exact figures as to how many women were actually partaking in the practice.
So it’s really difficult to say how widespread DIY leg makeup was, at least on a regular basis. It must have been so cumbersome to mix and apply, and it definitely was not waterproof. Even the expensive pre-made leg makeup sold by cosmetic companies were not necessarily waterproof formulas despite their advertising. The gravy browning in particular was rumored to attract dogs and flies.I can’t envision women applying it themselves or going to the leg makeup “bars” to have others apply it every day, but maybe they did. It was a very different time; one woman remarked that it was “embarrassing” to go without stockings, so perhaps the social stigma was strong enough to force women to try DIY alternatives, and the cosmetics shortage in the UK was a lot worse than in the U.S. As for face makeup, the same ideas apply – I’m skeptical of how widespread DIY makeup was, but it seems most women in the UK could not afford cosmetics during the war even if they were readily available (which, again, they weren’t…lots of shortages. While the UK government believed that cosmetics boosted morale so they didn’t completely stop producing makeup, it was still difficult to obtain.) I must point out that men enjoyed making fun of us silly, shallow women’s efforts to keep up with the constant societal expectation of beauty. And of course, they always had it worse. I can’t roll my eyes hard enough at these clippings.
In any case, some sources state that beetroot juice was substituted for lip makeup and blush, shoe polish or soot (!) for mascara, and starch for face powder (NOT flour, as proposed by the sexist windbag above). Some women melted down whatever was left of their existing lipsticks and mixed them with Vaseline to make a balm. The two sources I found to be most useful on DIY makeup were 1940s Fashion by Fiona Kay and A People’s War by Peter Lewis. Madeleine Marsh’s book Compacts and Cosmetics (p.124) and Geoffrey Jones’s Beauty Imagined (p. 136) also have brief mentions of DIY wartime makeup. Finally, I also recommended to Katie that she reach out to Kate Thompson, who has written several historical fiction novels about women who worked at the Yardley cosmetics factory in the UK during the war, and my understanding is that she’s done quite a bit of research into WWII makeup. Anyway, Katie bravely tried out the gravy browning and a bunch of other homemade wartime beauty substitutes! Kudos to her for re-creating these unusual and rather messy cosmetic practices.
Next, an antique store owner asked about some old cosmetics sales kits by the name of Velens that she had come across. I didn’t turn up much on the brand’s products, but here’s what I was able to find. The company was founded in 1930 by a Swedish ex-pat named Leo B. Selberg. Selberg had a background in chemistry and previously worked for Luzier, another cosmetics brand at the time. The Velen’s Educational Cosmetics name was copyrighted that same year, as well as something called “Paul Velen’s Color Harmony Chart”. As it turns out, a man by the name of Paul Velen (based in Kansas) had actually come up with all the formulas prior to Selberg’s involvement. The relationship between Selberg and Velen isn’t clear; however, from newspaper clippings it seems that before moving to Missouri, Selberg socialized frequently with an older brother of Paul, A.R. (Reuben) Velen, so I’m assuming they knew each other. Paul also had a degree in chemistry, although what inspired him to start a beauty business remains a mystery. Maybe Leo approached Paul about being the owner of the business while continuing to sell under the Velen name and keeping the formulas, but it doesn’t seem like either of them were too involved/hands on with the line. Selberg sold Velen’s in 1959 to a company called Greer and Associates, but I couldn’t find any mention of Velen’s Cosmetics after 1955 so it may have been on its last legs by that point anyway. Paul Velen died in May of 1969 at the age of 68; Selberg in 1979 at the age of 83. There was also a man named Albert Colborn who served briefly as Chairman of the Board of Velen’s Cosmetics from 1930-1933 and started his own beauty company called the Modernistic Beauty Service in 1933, but I couldn’t turn up much about him other than his obituary.
Anyway, the Velen’s line wasn’t used for training at beauty schools but rather for demonstrations in salons to sell to salon customers. In fact, it was almost exclusively sold in salons with some direct sales (door-to-door/traveling) agents, not in department or drug stores. The “educational” part of the name meant that beauty salon employees would “educate” their clientele on the best products for them and how to apply them. It looks like it was sold primarily in the Midwest and Texas, with some salons as far away as California and New Hampshire, which is why it’s a little surprising there aren’t more records or product photos. So this was quite a find and an interesting tidbit.
Skipping ahead to the late 1950s, the Museum received a few questions about Helena Rubinstein’s Mascara-Matic. First, someone sent in a box with some adorable packaging, which was released for the holiday season in 1958.
I couldn’t find a magazine ad, but there were a couple of newspaper ads. A year later Rubinstein released another holiday edition of Mascara-Matic with a Christmas ornament design on the box. As far as I know the “harlequin” style in the photos sent in to the Museum was only released in 1958, and it doesn’t seem like Rubinstein released any other holiday edition boxes of Mascara-Matic except for 1958 and 1959.
Then another person wrote in asking about the value of an original Helena Rubinstein Mascara-Matic, believing that the one she had found was from its first production run and worth a whopping £3,000 according to this Daily Mail article. It’s hard to say with certainty whether any Mascara-Matics are from the first run. Perhaps those had the patent number and everything after that was marked “waterproof” or did not have any markings around the middle. However, the one I purchased for the Museum has the patent number but also came with a refill, and refills were not sold until 1958, a year after the mascara’s debut. Even if the one the person had was original, it’s not clear where the figure of £3,000 comes from. The Museum does not do valuations, but I will say Mascara-Matics, either with patent numbers or marked “waterproof” typically sell for about $50 so I can’t see an original being worth 60 times more, unless there was proof it belonged to a celebrity or something like that. There was also a listing for one with a patent number at eBay – from what I can tell it was unsold with a starting bid of £49.95. If it was in fact sold, again, I can’t see it going for £3,000 even in mint condition.
Lastly, another vintage store owner inquired about a skincare kit sold by blender brand Osterizer. (There are larger photos of the jars at Etsy.)
Based on the coupon included in the photo and some newspaper ads it was sold between 1971 and 1975. It looked like quite the gimmick. There wasn’t a ton of information on it, but it seems Oster was trying to cash in on the “natural” cosmetics trend of the late ’60s/early ’70s and sold these kits for those who already had a blender and wanted to make their own organic skincare with fresh ingredients.
But who really needs brand name pink jars and labels for homemade cosmetics? One could go to any craft store and get their own supplies. And while Google didn’t exist back then, the recipes would have been pretty easy to find as well. I’m just a bit astounded at what they were trying to sell, as it really seems to be a cash grab. Anyway, it’s a fascinating bit of beauty history and definitely an expression of the era.
Which one of these were you most intrigued by? While I’m not the best at solving makeup mysteries I do enjoy receiving them, so please don’t hesitate to send any objects or questions to the Museum!
I'm always so grateful when someone agrees to an interview with the Museum, and the one I'm featuring today is very special! You might remember the AstroLips lipstick line that was mentioned in the Museum's history of zodiac-themed makeup and how I was puzzled over not being able to find any information about it or its creator, makeup artist Scotty Ferrell. Well, as luck would have it, Scotty found the Museum's article and introduced himself and offered more information on the line. Naturally I wanted to hear as much as possible about it, along with Scotty himself! He kindly granted me an interview. Please read on to discover his work, his experience working with some of the biggest brands in the '90s and early 2000s, and his latest venture: an (actually useful!) beauty app.
MM: How did you get into makeup? What interested you about it?
SF: My fascination for cosmetics began when I got into trouble playing in my Mom’s makeup and opening all the small perfume bottles she had from Avon. I would get so excited when the Avon lady came over to visit and brought her big case of colors and potions. I was hooked. The mystery of all the pretty colors and glass containers captured my spirit.
MM: What was your experience working in makeup in the '90s? And what were the big trends/products? SF: The 1990’s really were amazing years for makeup. People were so excited to sit and learn about their makeup wanting to know how to apply eyeliner themselves and experiment with color. Quality makeup brushes and how to use them was so rewarding to work with people ready to discover and develop their own personal style. I had so much fun painting faces because the trends were really strong and each seasonal look was trying to top the next. I think the light lid and strong crease was all the rage because finally single eyeshadows were available in the artistry brands allowing for more experimentation. I loved when I started applying to my clients two different color liners top and bottom lash lines. Jewel tones in combination were really big during late 90’s.
The true smokey eye also came from this time period. The smokey eye really is buffing out the eyeliner on the lower lid and layering it with a dark shadow. But now today, anyone wearing eyeshadow says it’s a smokey eye when it’s not. I am not a big fan of the influencers because too much misinformation and lack of experience working with real people seems to be most popular. Influencers are pushing wrong information because they lack the makeup artistry experience applying makeup on people other than themselves. Too many influencers are promoting low quality products and wiz-bang techniques that do not wear or look professional. The legacy brands still have the some of the best tried and true products like Lancome’s Effacernes and Aquatique eye concealer/base, Elizabeth Arden Flawless finish cream foundation these products cannot be beat. Influencers are pushing the industry against quality products that cannot withstand a real photoshoots, catwalks under hot lights or outdoor weddings.
MM: Tell us about your alter ego, Gigi Romero, and how she inspired you to create the AstroLips line! SF: Say GiGi Romero to me and I light up and am romanced dreaming about the silver screen stars like Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren just to name a few. GiGi Romero is my muse/ alter ego that channels the larger than life confidence and on-stage personality that celebrates their fans with great entertainment. Makeup delivers the fantasy to a tangible reality, a way to feel special because it’s fun to play dress-up. So when the brainstorm came over me about AstroLips with Lovespell, I thought of GiGi Romero conjuring up the colors and speaking directly with the cosmos to create the shades and stories belonging to each sun sign. AstroLips with Lovespell may still have a come back yet when GiGi Romero connects with the stars once again!
AstroLips shades, 2000. Images provided by Scotty Ferrell.
AstroLipLiners, 2001. Image provided by Scotty Ferrell.
MM: You had mentioned [in a previous correspondence] you had some stories about Smashbox, Trish McEvoy planners, etc. Can you expand on those? SF: Bill Parks, rest his loving soul, does not get the credit he deserves creating the Smashbox brand from scratch let alone me helping him launch the brand coast to coast. I consider the absence of acknowledging his contribution to Smashbox beyond shameful on the part of Estee Lauder and the great grandsons of Max Factor, Dean and Davis. The origin story begins with Bill Parks and me working for Trish McEvoy. Trish McEvoy held a big, big meeting with Nordstrom west coast to bring a next-level strategy for her Nordstrom counters putting Bill Parks in charge and me as at-counter National Artist to produce at the events. After this meeting show casing Bill Parks as a business superstar that he was, Nordstrom secretly invited just Bill to a clandestine behind the curtain meeting for Smashbox. Nordstrom was initially investing in the launch of Smashbox the artistry brand for Dean and Davis Factor, but knew it needed someone who actually understood selling color cosmetics. Bill agreed to their offer and left to be the creative head of Smashbox to create products, sell the products and be the personal face launching the line coast to coast. I stayed with Trish McEvoy for a couple more years seeing Bill grow the brand all on his own.
Smashbox postcard, ca. 1996
Bill actually worked to formulate the first cream eyeliner for that time because he knew the pitfalls from Trish’s eyeshadow liners and brush #11. How did Smashbox get on QVC? Well, let me tell you a story. Michael diCesare haircare and hair brushes were in several Nordstrom stores where he also met Bill Parks. They hit it off and whenever I saw Michael he would always ask me where’s Bill? Michael was already on QVC selling his products and asked Bill to do the makeup for his models. The rest is history once QVC met Bill Parks he began selling Smashbox to record heights on their channel. I joined Bill Parks in 1998 launching Smashbox into other retailers in addition to more Nordstrom doors. I trained Holly Mordini who later took Bill’s place on QVC after Bill passed away suddenly. I have many cherished memories and stories about my time with Trish and learning directly from her extremely talented hands and eye for color. Trish gave me the freedom, encouragement and confidence to become the best showman and artist I could be. Trish demanded us to all have a Franklin Planner and follow its system to set goals and exceed them. So after a big, big event in Dallas Neimans Northpark we all piled in this van we thought to go back to the hotel or wherever we were staying that night, but instead Trish had other plans. Somehow she kept telling the driver to continue to drive around, drive around while we all talked and Trish was in the groove to with her vision to send us her elite team back across the country opening counters, raising up important stores that needed an open to buy and who would stay in Dallas making sure we prevented any event returns or sold more than might come back to counter. A bunch of us, her elite team were frantically turning the pages to our Franklin Planners trying to make sure we got every word and detail correct coming from Trish. Suddenly, we all start talking about how organizing our makeup just like our Franklin Planners! I was already putting Face Essential shadows on palette boards to make it easier to paint at events. We all were competing for an edge to sell better and did our best with our brush rolls and our go-to favorites. It was decided that night that Trish had to go to Italy to get this new idea off the ground. The first set of pages were that same kind of plastic used for potted plants you get from the store. The brush bag of course had to be like Trish’s black Chanel bag that I did get to hold for her on one of our trips. The story about how Trish’s Planner came in to existence has changed over the years. Trish tells the story now moving up the timeline to when she was in Italy with her husband ordering the first version. The beginning year of the Planner was very exciting but took a lot of effort before we got better and better versions of the pages which had to be switched out several times for customers.
There is a very, very important story that I still to this day want to remind Trish personally. I am certain Trish does remember that Saks 5th Avenue almost sabotaged the Planner’s first Christmas. The part that Trish may have forgotten, and I would like to definitely remind her that I am the very person who sounded the alarm. I know exactly where I was and how I found out Saks 5th Ave was ready to go to the floor with their knock-off Planner. I was painting local models for a Saks 5th Ave Fashion show at the Intercontinental Hotel Miami. A Saks 5th Ave big-wig who flew down for the event also came back stage and was showing off what he knew that Saks “had a knock-off Planner in their warehouse ready to go on the Holiday Sales floor to under-cut Trish’s Planner 1 st Christmas.” I ran outside, on my very first cell, all the way outside and called the office demanding to speak with Trish directly. I said it was extremely urgent and that she had better get her lawyers on the phone to save the Planner! I called more than once even on a pay-phone in the lobby with every chance I could get until I was sure the message got through. Trish, if you're listening, my cell number is still the same!
MM: How would you say the cosmetics marketing landscape has changed since the late '90s? (e.g. the impact of the Internet/e-commerce/social media, etc.) And what stayed the same? Do you find it more or less difficult to sell makeup now? SF: After the 90’s, companies did change dramatically not wanting to support events. Not wanting to pay artists who knew the brand intimately and loved teaching customers how to wear new looks, how to apply their makeup providing live- action customer service. The focus became and still is selling one hit-product at a time. Click-bait selling beauty over the internet breaks down the expertise of professionals that know how to design personalized beauty regimens for individual customers. Brands and social beauty stars are ignoring that beauty products must work together to be successful helping people. It is a must to talk to customers and listen to their needs so their lifestyles fit the products that do work together and deliver the results people are after.
MM: You've explained about your new app, but please elaborate on it and what inspired you to create it. SF: This is the great segueway to my app. Face My Makeup app is reality based and is a digital version of how millions upon millions of makeup and skincare products were sold for years. Face My Makeup app is a digital face-chart but actually its true potential is personalized beauty’s next generation Face-cart that provides customer service and supports sales. I created Face My Makeup app directly from my experience selling on the road for Trish and BABOR. My customers would carry with them for years and tape to their mirrors the Face-charts I made for them with all the tips, tricks, colors, shades and multiple products that we chose together. Countless times a woman I helped years prior would find me again bringing her Face-chart and wanted a fresh new look. This love for the Face-chart and service it provides is so valuable and necessary for personalized beauty to be meaningful to make sense. Face My Makeup app has been received with open arms having over 5000 downloads from Google Play and the same amounts for iPhone app store. The elevator pitch that grabs people’s attention, “If you lost your makeup bag with all your favs, how many eClicks would it take for you to replace all your makeup? Would you remember all the names, shades and brands? Is there an eCommerce site that knows your Day Look products from your Night Look routine?” eCommerce, Mobile sales are obviously here to stay but what I know is must have companion is the Face-cart service from Face My Makeup app. (Disclaimer: The Makeup Museum is not endorsing/advertising the Face My Makeup app and has not been compensated in any way for mentioning it; its inclusion in this interview is merely for information-sharing purposes.)
Face My Makeup app overview. Image provided by Scotty Ferrell.
MM: What are some of your favorite makeup trends or looks? (Can be current, can be historical, whatever you want!) SF: Deep violet and emerald jewel tones playing off each other in the outer corner is to die for. I love an extended eyeliner that isn’t a cat eye but more Egyptian straight across with a softer edge. I think I still have a similar color story that I created for BABOR. A look I did paint on Jennifer Lopez on South Beach right after she made Selena. It was this beautiful tangerine and lime combination with shadows from Shu Uemura so super hot even though Jenny was less than nice.
MM: Anything else you'd like to add? SF: I just want to get back on the team and do the work in beauty that I continue to see is still so necessary to produce results. Talking, listening to customers providing them service with the skills and experience to back it up; I’m there. Customers are demanding these conversations but those in charge have never painted a single face, ran an event with 100s of people making sure everyone leaves happy. Anticipating people’s needs and following up with a menu of choices is what it takes to grow a business. Translating this process digitally is doable but only from professionals that have touched faces with honest and real experiences. I mean why is Bobbi Brown now on Jones Road? Huge shout outs to forgotten greats, Alexander De Markoff, Stagelight, Germaine Monteil, Stendahl, PAYOT, Shu Uemura, and my ultimate favorite closest to my heart, Fernand Aubry!
The highly coveted Shu Uemura ME 945 eyeshadow
Thank you so much, Scotty, for this wonderful history you've provided! It's incredibly illuminating to get a first-hand account of how the makeup industry and trends change (or don't), and I'm so pleased to hear more about my favorite era. The Face My Makeup app sounds great, but I hope we see more of Gigi's creations in the future too. 😉 MM'ers: any thoughts?
You might remember I became obsessed with finding information on the Baby Doll makeup range back in the spring of 2017, when I came across their fabulously psychedelic and colorful ads from the late ’60s. While I managed to acquire several of the original ads, I still couldn’t find much on brand itself, other than it was exclusive to Woolworth’s in the UK and obviously geared towards younger women/teenagers. Fortunately, UK-based Makeup Museum volunteer Emma Berger stepped in to do some research! In addition to what she uncovered on her own, she also had the brilliant idea to email the curator of the Woolworth’s Museum, Paul Seaton, who provided additional information. Here’s what Emma and Paul had to say about the brand. (Images in this post are the Museum’s unless otherwise noted.)
Baby Doll was launched in May of 1967 at all 1,100 Woolworth’s locations in the UK. The supplier of the line was a company named E.R. Holloway, a family-owned business. Based in Lavenham, Suffolk, Holloway was a principle supplier of affordable cosmetics following WWII. The ‘Evette’ brand was one of the market leaders in the 1950s, coinciding with shoppers having more spending money and cosmetics becoming more socially acceptable. Later, the company realized there was a vast, largely untapped teenage market that wanted to emulate actresses and models like Twiggy. Holloway conducted some market research by assembling a panel of teenage girls, who indicated that they would like inexpensive, fun makeup with bright colors, especially for nail polish and lip gloss. They found the Woolworth’s current makeup offerings to be boring and old-fashioned, and they also didn’t want to be “stuck waiting behind older ladies” so they also wanted their own counters.
Judging by the ads, E.R. Holloway delivered. I don’t know about the quality of the makeup, but the prices appeared to be a pittance for the incredibly colorful and fun product line. According to the Sharon Kane, author of the Sweet Jane blog, the eye-catching ads appeared in UK magazines like Jackie, RAVE and Photoplay magazines. It’s unclear as to what prompted the choice to use illustrated girls vs. photographs of models, but I think the decision was appropriate, as it aligned with the Baby Doll brand vision – supplying plenty of colors to choose from and encouraging “playtime” with makeup – and also helped them stand out from their competitors.
The use of illustration was fairly unique for the time as by the late 1960s illustrations had become scarce in cosmetic ads. By that point, most companies had shifted towards using photos for the bulk of their marketing – gone were the days of hiring artists and fashion illustrators who ruled advertising from the 1920s through the ’40s. The ads can also be considered a precursor of sorts to the Stila girl illustrations some 30 years later.
The ads are also representative of their time in their mentions of sun, moon and stars as in the ad below, or numerology as in their Lucky Numbers ad. Remember that flower children were pretty fascinated with astrology and other pseudo-science, so it makes sense to incorporate these aspects as they appealed to the hippie demographic.
Obviously I’m smitten with the print ads, but the radio commercials were a hoot. The spots aired on Radio Luxenbourg and used Woolworth’s Embassy Records commercials as a template, given their success with a younger crowd. I tried to put together a little video using the clip that Paul so kindly shared. I couldn’t get Typepad to upload it so I had to (shudder) put it on YouTube and link to it. Ugh.
Paul mentioned that Holloway took a “shared risk” approach with Baby Doll by financing the counters and product development in exchange for Woolworth selling the products in all their stores for at least two years and for continuing to carry the Evette line. Consumers were pleased with Baby Doll, at least according to one anecdote shared by Brenda Hendley for Yours magazine. “When working as a Saturday Girl in Woolworths in the late 1960s I was lucky enough to be on the make-up counter when they launched Baby Doll Cosmetics. As a 15-year-old girl, this range was so exciting. It had lilac, green and blue nail varnish, brown eyeshadow and pale pink, lilac and peach lipsticks, instead of the usual red and orange nail colours worn by our mothers. Even the posters were exciting with illustrated dolly girls in the arms of handsome men. To my mother’s horror, I went out that weekend sporting lilac nail polish and lilac lipstick to match my lilac mini dress. I can still remember how excited and glamorous I felt.”
Paul confirmed Baby Doll was a successful line, but Holloway may have ended up competing against it by launching Tu, another youth-oriented range, in the 1970s. Tu was popular in both the UK and Canada and was “less fashionable” meaning that perhaps Baby Doll’s only flaw was that it was too niche. Rainbow colors are great but if that’s all a makeup line offers, only a certain demographic – mostly teenagers, and adventurous ones at that – would have purchased it back then. From the look and sound of it, Tu was an affordable line for younger clientele, but sold more versatile (read: safe) color and products that would be suitable for daily use. Baby Doll, by contrast, had very few neutral shades and textures; unfortunately I don’t think yellow lipstick and pink mascara would be considered everyday wear even among younger women. In any case, you can see displays from both the Tu and Evette lines over at Karen Waddy’s blog, Made in Lavenham.
Some brief additional thoughts: first, I would give my eye teeth to know who illustrated these ads! I’ve pored over the ads to see if there was any artist signatures but no luck. Sharon Kane suggested that Caroline Smith may have been responsible for at least some of the ads and I think that’s as a good a guess as any. (You can see more of her work here.) I actually contacted Smith through her website and am hoping for a reply. Update: I heard back from the artist and she confirmed the Baby Doll ads are her work! How very exciting to finally have this makeup mystery solved!
I also wish I could locate some of the makeup itself, but I’ve literally never seen any actual photos of it except for this one.
You can sort of see them in this ad which dates to 1969 and does not use the amazing illustrations, instead opting for the typical close-up photo. I think the line definitely loses a bit of its appeal. As noted earlier, without the unique ads, Baby Doll resembles a pretty run-of-the-mill makeup line that doesn’t really stand out from other youth-oriented UK brands (although “she didn’t tell her ugly sisters either” cracks me up.)
This brings me to my last point: it’s strange that you can still buy objects from what I believe were Baby Doll’s UK-based competitors at the time, Yardley, Mary Quant, Boots 17, Miner’s and Rimmel, but not a single relic from Baby Doll besides the ads still exists that I’ve seen. I’m very curious about Baby Doll’s sales compared to other brands, as they had a very similar outlook in terms of a more playful approach to makeup and were primarily intended for the youth market. Why these brands had longevity while Baby Doll, despite its distinctive ads, did not is interesting. Perhaps the facts that Mary Quant already had significant name recognition as a modern fashion brand and that Yardley hired some of the biggest models of the time for their makeup campaigns had something to do with it. Additionally, while Holloway was an established company, it didn’t have quite the pedigree of Rimmel (established in 1834) or the reach of Miner’s and Boots 17. It’s a shame, honestly, as I believe Baby Doll was the most creative and fun line out of all of these. Okay, I have a weakness for Quant’s crayons and basically all of Yardley’s packaging (especially their paint boxes and novelty items), but I think Baby Doll is my favorite for the ads, colors and overall vibe. If I had been around back then I would have bought the whole line.
HUGE thanks to Emma and Paul for researching and gathering this history and permitting me to post it here! And if anyone has additional information or memories they’d like to share about Baby Doll I’m all ears.
Tooting my own horn again, apologies. But I was so excited to be interviewed for an article on the history of blush and its current resurgence (and in which I was referred to as an "expert"!) In case you haven't noticed, blush is back with a vengeance. You can click over to Hypebae for the article, but given how much time I spent answering the journalist's questions I thought I'd post my full answers here. Plus, more Museum photos! Enjoy…and please let me know any and all thoughts on blush in the comments. 🙂
Blush has been used in ancient cultures across Egypt, Greece and more. Can you walk us through the origins of blush and explain how it was used in different areas of the world? (Please feel free to include as much detail as possible.) The ancient Egyptians were most likely the first to use blush as a cosmetic aid. A fresco in Santorini from the Bronze Age depicts women with red cheeks, the rest of their faces unadorned. In China, blush was used as early as the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE). Later, during the Tang Dynasty reign, imperial concubine Yang Guifei (719-746 AD) regularly wore heavy blush at court. In Greece and Rome, blush was primarily used by upper class women and applied in a subtle way; noticeable check color was frowned upon. Blush also crossed gender lines throughout some early civilizations and up through the 18th Over time, as white supremacy grew ever more powerful, blush became part of an “ideal” complexion that signified wealth and high status – blush was used in part as a way to make pale skin stand out more, which was desirable as white skin represented a life free from toiling outside. At the same time, for the most part blush was supposed to be undetectable. It wasn’t until the 20th century that blush became socially acceptable.
A selection of the Makeup Museum's vintage blushes, ca. 1920s-30s
Why do you think blush has endured as a widely used makeup product? Blush has endured primarily because it’s a critical element of meeting two long-standing beauty ideals: health and youth. Cheek color signifies vitality; while I don’t think any live person not wearing blush would be mistaken for a corpse, blush heightens one’s natural color, further emphasizing a healthy flow of oxygenated blood (i.e., a literal life force) to the face. Cheek color became associated with markers of health such as physical fitness, good nutrition and rest. Cheek color is also associated with youth, which has been a pillar in beauty standards for millennia and one that persists today. (Note: I can expand on the link between health, youth and beauty but it would take forever as there are quite complex psychological and scientific explanations).
Princess Pat rouge ad, 1940
Some historians claim that blush’s universal appeal, much like lip color, is due to its mimicking of sexual arousal or a post-coital flush. While I personally find that theory dubious – I’m just not a fan of the sexualization of makeup – it’s important to remember that the most famous and possibly best-selling blush in modern times is NARS’ Orgasm. Additionally, for centuries in the Western world, with a few exceptions here and there (such as mid-late 18th century France), excessive makeup, including noticeable rouge, was considered the domain of prostitutes, so that’s another connection between blush and sexuality. Along those lines, one could even argue that the traditional virgin-whore dichotomy is a factor in blush’s longevity. Looking flushed could point to embarrassment at the notion of intimate relations, signaling a dainty, demure and virtuous woman, or it could be overtly sexual. Either way, blush’s sexual connotations helped solidify its status as an essential cosmetic. Finally, a simplistic reason for blush enduring through the years was that it was as easy to obtain ingredient-wise as lip color. There were readily available materials across the world. Whether it was the ochre of ancient Egyptians, poisonous cinnabar of the Romans, safflower used in parts of Asia or a basic mixture of berries and water, raw ingredients could be found virtually anywhere.
Blush sales are increasing. In your opinion, what could be contributing to that rise? First, I believe there’s a psychological component involved. Most of us have been privileged enough to work from home, see friends and family via video conference, and were able to adjust our routines, but that all of that has taken a toll on our mental health. Being trapped behind a screen far more than we’re used to, with little in-person contact, struggling to work and interact and essentially function in a completely different way for over a year can lead to feeling drab and lifeless, despite being physically healthy. As noted earlier, cheek color represents vigor and liveliness. This is why every spring fashion and beauty magazines have features on banishing the “winter blahs”, with the number one tip inevitably being the purchase of a new shade of blush to look and feel rejuvenated. Thus, with its promise of restoring a youthful, rested glow, blush may help combat the dullness experienced as a result of having to curtail so many activities that are essential to one’s well-being as well as general pandemic-related exhaustion. As one beauty writer notes, she applied “a generous helping of blush to help me look alive even though on most days I felt dead inside.” I also think that now since the pandemic is on the verge of ending, we are collectively dreaming about fresh starts and enjoying life more fully again. More so than other makeup categories, on a spiritual level the application of blush may help us awaken from the trauma and upheaval unleashed by the pandemic, a way to feel more vibrant and a reminder that our health is relatively intact. On related note, a healthy flush is associated with being outdoors, which many of us haven’t been able to do. If you can’t enjoy a reinvigorating jaunt through nature, you can at least pretend you got the blood flowing with some blush.
Secondly, even though we are optimistically looking towards the end of the age of COVID-19, life has not returned to how it was pre-pandemic for most. Many people are still reconsidering and adjusting all of their makeup, including blush, in light of continuing Zoom calls. Depending on one’s camera and lighting, a person may need to increase the amount of color so as to not appear washed out; in other cases, they’re finding that their regular application is too heavy-handed. Thus, in addition to adapting their current products, they’re seeking either new shades or new formulas that are effortless and “goof-proof” for video.
Finally, I think at the moment the market is so saturated with every other form of makeup – highlighters, (especially!) eye products, lip colors, even base makeup, companies figured it was time to swing the pendulum back to blush. It’s a product category that’s been relatively neglected due to the popularity of contouring and the no-makeup look. But these two trends were already waning, with consumers wanting a simpler approach to cheek color than the skill and time required by contouring as well as a look that was more than the bare minimum of the no-makeup face. Another trend that’s been gaining traction the past few years is the notion of wellness. Consumers are increasingly interested in cosmetic options that might also have benefits for their physical and mental well-being. The pandemic engendered a renewed focus on health, making wellness and self-care more important to consumers than before. It follows that blush, and its long-standing association with health, would be more in demand. In short, a return to blush was brewing for a while and was accelerated by the pandemic, hence the rise in sales now.
During the 19th century, symptoms of tuberculosis including pale skin and red, feverish cheeks became fashionable, leading women to recreate a sickly appearance using makeup. Can you explain the link between beauty and illness, as well as how that relationship might manifest into the age of coronavirus? The mimicking of TB wasn’t a widespread or long-lasting trend because historically there is a much stronger link between beauty and health than illness. Having said that, what the recreation of tuberculosis did was simply exaggerate the already entrenched notions of beauty – pallid skin and flushed cheeks. No one was feigning smallpox, for example, because the effects of that disease were viewed as ugly and disfiguring. (And as soon as TB began to be associated with the lower classes, it quickly became unfashionable to fake it…but that’s a whole other story.) Today there are some trends such as Igari (the “hangover” look) and Byojaku (“sickly”), but they are intended to achieve a distinct kawaii aesthetic. Again, no one is doing a tutorial on getting the coronavirus look using makeup because the symptoms are viewed as unappealing (plus I’d like to think with so many lives lost people would be a little more sensitive than to pull a stunt like that.) There is a link between beauty and illness, but only so far as the illness’s effects align with current beauty standards. Overall, blush is primarily used to look healthy. For every one “hangover” or other similar trend piece, there are at least 10 articles emphasizing the importance of wearing blush while ill to counteract the symptoms that are perceived as unattractive. Sometimes a warm-toned blush or even bronzer is recommended to distract from redness or other discoloration around the nose and eyes, as that symptom is viewed as aesthetically undesirable.
Clairol blush ad, 1967
Over the past year, have you noticed a shift at all in how people are wearing blush? What I’ve been observing in beauty publications and on social media is that people are perceiving blush as more than an afterthought or a basic necessity in tying a look together. Blush is becoming exciting in its own right again; cheeks are no longer playing third fiddle to eyes and lips or serving just as a canvas for contour and highlight. On a basic level, unlike the lips, at least part of the cheeks is still visible while wearing a mask. Some have adapted the ‘80s trend of taking blush up past the temples, closer to the eyes, so that it’s more noticeable behind a mask – as with eye makeup, the emphasis is on what can still be seen in a mask.
More significantly, how people are wearing blush is just one part of the pandemic’s larger impact on makeup routines more generally. People found their normal beauty routine disrupted, and they’ve been questioning it: why am I wearing makeup, who am I wearing it for, and do I really want to be wearing a full face every day? From my perspective, people seem to have gone in several directions or a combination thereof: some kept up with their usual makeup routine to retain a sense of normalcy, others began experimenting with makeup in ways they wouldn’t normally otherwise, and still others greatly pared down their routine. It’s this last path, I think, that has caused the biggest shift in how people are wearing blush. Many are finding they don’t want or feel the need to do a full face for virtual meetings and staying at home, so they’re embracing a more relaxed approach that includes a quick swipe of blush rather than combining it with contour and highlight. Sculpted cheekbones are being pushed aside in favor of a less “done”, more carefree look that is easily achieved with blush. Whether or not low-maintenance makeup sticks around as quarantine life fades away is anybody’s guess; I think it might, but I also think in some instances people will be piling on the makeup as a way to celebrate the end of the pandemic – now that our faces aren’t obscured we can wear as much as we like without a mask rubbing it off. In fact, while the average makeup wearer may be rediscovering the joys of basic blush application, over the top blush is already trending on the editorial side. If the usual amount of cheek color signifies physical well-being, in the age of COVID-19, perhaps an excessive application will reinforce the notion of health. The super flushed look may end up as an exuberant symbol of survival.
I love when I get an inquiry to which I can actually give a solid response. A gentleman sent in this picture he had of an old lipstick and asked if I could identify it and provide any sense of its monetary value.
I recognized it immediately as one of the Revlon Couturines doll lipsticks released between 1961 and 1963. But which one? The only one I recognize off the top of my head is Liz Taylor as Cleopatra, since it's pretty obvious.
Fortunately the Revlon Couturines appear in Lips of Luxury (which I highly recommend for any beauty aficionado – check out my review here and in-person pics here.) According to the photos in the book it's not Marilyn Monroe.
Or Ava Gardner.
So it must be one of these ladies.
Aha! Looks like it's Jackie Kennedy (last one on the right.)
What's fascinating to me about the submitter's photo is that his doll appears to be wearing a little fur stole around her neck, whereas in the photo from the book she doesn't have one. As for the value, Revlon Couturines can fetch a pretty hefty price. Even though the photo is blurry, the one submitted to me looks to be in excellent condition. And given that she has a stole, which I'm assuming is original (the original Marilyn Monroe figurine has neckwear as well, which isn't shown in the picture in Lips of Luxury), that would probably increase the value. I think a fair asking price would be $150-$250. At the moment I don't even see any Jackie figurines for sale.
What do you think of these? This post reminds me that I really need to track down at least one for the Museum – I can't believe I don't own any. Another one (or 8) to add to the old wishlist.
Update, 2/6/2020: It only took 5.5 years, but I finally procured a few of these lovely ladies for the Museum!
I am sorry to say that I can confirm these are not cruelty-free. As a matter of fact, Revlon made it a point to highlight the "genuine" mink, fox and chinchilla used. How times have changed. I'm also wondering whether all the ones listed for sale over the years as having brown mink are actually fox fur, as indicated in the ad below. Then again, this was the only ad I saw that referenced fox fur, so maybe the brown ones are mink as well.
The white mink one is not in the best shape – there's a little bit of wear on the paint on her lips and discoloration around her "waist" – but she does have the original box. I'm suspecting the black mark is remnants of a belt, as shown here. (Apologies for changing the background in these photos but I was shooting across several days and was too lazy to retrieve the paper I had used originally.)
The chinchilla-clad lady, however, is basically new in the box. One hundred percent museum quality!
From what I was able to piece together from newspaper ads, the ones without animal fur were advertised as "mannequins" and originally released in 1961, while the chinchilla, fox and mink ones were referred to as "girls" and debuted during the holiday season of 1962. Both series fell under the Couturine name.
There were originally 12 designs, according to this ad. Of course, you paid a little more for the Mannequins with hats and jewelry.
Most of them were similar but had a few details switched up. This is especially true for the Girls series. For example, the brown mink/fox one I procured has the same color velvet at the bottom and one pair of rhinestones, but the one in Lips of Luxury has pink velvet and 4 rhinestones. The colors of the velvet and type of fur were also mixed and matched.
But one question remains. I'm wondering where Jean-Marie Martin Hattemberg, whose book Lips of Luxury I referenced earlier, retrieved his information. Obviously I don't think he just made up the idea that each Couturine was intended to be a replica of an actress or other famous woman. But I'm so curious to know how he came to that conclusion since I've never seen them advertised or referred to that way anywhere other than his book. Perhaps he knew someone at Revlon who designed them? Or maybe they were marketed differently outside of the U.S.? In any case, there's no mention of the chinchilla Couturine and several other of the original 12 dolls in Lips of Luxury, so I'm not sure who they're supposed to be. Hopefully one of these days I'll solve another makeup mystery. 😉
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I'm so very excited to announce the Makeup Museum's special exhibition in honor of Stila's 25th anniversary! I was too overwhelmed to do a full history of the brand, so I decided to just focus on the famous Stila girl illustrations. If you've been following me for a while you know that the Stila girls were sort of the gateway drug for my interest in collecting makeup and seeing cosmetics packaging as art. For such a milestone anniversary I knew I wanted to pay tribute to them, even though the year is almost over (thankfully – it's been miserable for a number of reasons), especially given that I've been itching to put together a special exhibition for them since at least 2016. I also wanted to try something totally new for the Museum in terms of exhibitions. Technically all of them are online, but instead of putting things on shelves and taking photos, I wanted it to have a more "real" online exhibition feel. I've been doing a lot of thinking the past year or so about how to improve the exhibitions even though I'm so limited in what I can do, and I was really inspired by the Kanebo Compact Museum website, and once the husband showed me Squarespace I was sold. Well that, and the fact that he kindly offered to design the entire exhibition site for me. ;) So I set up a domain there which, if this exhibition is well-received, will serve as the space for the Museum's special exhibitions going forward. The seasonal ones will remain here if I decide to keep going with them. Looking ahead, I think I'd rather focus on more specific topics than general seasonal trends. Not that I can delve too deeply into particular themes given the never-ending lack of resources, but I still want to at least try to do slightly more in-depth exhibitions even though they won't be exactly how I want them. I'm looking at them as a starting point for bigger things.
Enough of my blabbing about the basic stuff, I want to give some more details about the exhibition itself. It came together nicely, or at least, it was the one I worked most on with the possible exception of Sweet Tooth (still want to revisit that one!) I really wanted to get interviews with the key people behind the illustrations, so I put my crippling fear of rejection aside and boldly contacted Jeffrey Fulvimari (Stila's original illustrator), Caitlin Dinkins (illustrator during Stila's early aughts heyday) and Naoko Matsunaga (who took over for Dinkins in 2009). While I was disappointed at not hearing back from two of the three, if only one responded, I was glad it was Jeffrey since I've been following him for a while on Instagram and I love his approach to art and his personality. He is quite the character! It ended up giving me so much confidence I reached out to the grand poobah herself and my curatorship namesake, Jeanine Lobell. Yes, I actually DM'ed the founder of Stila on Instagram and asked if she'd be up for an interview. And…and…are you sitting down?? You really need to. Okay, now that you're sitting and won't have far to fall in case you faint, I can tell you that she agreed to do it!!
Not only that, she actually answered all of my interview questions!! You have no idea how ecstatic I was to finally be heard by a major industry figure. Took over a decade but I finally made contact with a big name! So that was most exciting, easily one of the most exciting things to happen in the Museum's 11-year history. And her answers were really good too, I've incorporated them throughout the exhibition so make sure to read through.
As for the items, I didn't take photos of everything in my collection because again, too overwhelming. The Museum has over 130 Stila items, nearly all of which feature the girls. I mean…
The photos I did take have purposely plain backgrounds because I wanted the emphasis to be on the illustrations. I tried to have a good mix of memorabilia and the makeup itself. I even had to iron a few items.
I also included a couple photos of things that I don't actually own but are important in getting a full picture (haha) of the illustrations. I'm pleased with how the sections are arranged, and I must thank my husband for organizing them so perfectly in addition to designing the whole site. I'm thinking of adding a section called Soundbites, a repository of quotes from the both the beauty community and general public telling me why they like the Stila girls or really anything related to the brand, so be sure to email me or comment here. I really wish I could have an app that would "Stila girl-ize" the user, i.e. you upload a picture of yourself and it would automatically generate a Stila girl style illustration of you, just like this. And of course, if the Museum occupied a physical space I'd definitely hire an artist to do live drawings at the exhibition opening – how fun would that be?
So that about wraps it up! Please take a look and tell me what you think of the new exhibition format!
Before I get to my review of Susan Stewart's Painted Faces, I must disclose that I received a copy for free from the author. In no way, shape or form did getting it for free influence my review, nor was it intended as a bribe for a positive one – I believe I was given a copy in exchange for me lending photos of some of the Museum's collection to be included in the book. Not only did Dr. Stewart provide an autograph, she also included me in the acknowledgements, which was incredibly kind.
Again though, I'd like to reiterate that this did not sway my opinion of the book at all. Now that that's out of the way, I can dive into the review.
The goal of Painted Faces is much the same as Lisa Eldridge's Face Paint in that it strives to provide a history of makeup from ancient times to the present day. However, a trained scholar/historian approaches this vast topic in a markedly different way than a makeup artist such as Eldridge. Neither perspective is better or worse than the other; ways to tell the story of makeup are nearly as varied as the people who wear it. Nor do I believe one has to have a set of particular credentials to write accurately and compellingly about makeup history, as I believe it comes down to a matter of preference for a certain writing style. As we saw with her first book, Painted Faces is more academic than Face Paint and relies on highlighting the economic and sociological aspects behind various beauty practices, whereas Eldridge adopts a more artistic tone, choosing instead to communicate makeup's history by focusing on application and styles as they evolved.
Stewart begins with an introduction (which also serves as the first chapter) summarizing the need to study makeup and beauty practices as it gives valuable insight into history that we may not have considered before. "Because of its wider significance, researching makeup, its uses, ingredients, its context and application, can provide clues not only to the nature and circumstance of the individual but can also help us to interpret the social, economic and political condition of society as a whole in any given period. That is to say, studying cosmetics can further our understanding of history…they are a window into the past and can encapsulate the hopes and ideas of the future. In short, makeup matters" (p. 8 and 10). Can I get an amen?! Stewart also carefully sets the parameters for the book, outlining the sources used and why she is primarily writing about cosmetics in the Western world.
Chapter 2 is essentially a condensed version of Stewart's previous tome on cosmetics in the ancient world, which doesn't need to be rehashed here (you can check out my review of that one to peruse the content). That's no small feat, considering how thorough it was. The next chapter covers the Middle Ages, which is interesting in and of itself since so little information about makeup and beauty exist from this era. As Stewart points out, the rise of Christianity meant people were no longer being interred with their possessions as they were in ancient Greece and Rome – these artifacts provided a wealth of knowledge about beauty practices then. Thus, any time after the spread of Christianity and before the modern age historians must rely primarily on texts, such as surviving beauty recipes and classic literature, rather than objects to infer any information about the use of makeup and other beauty items. The dominance of this religion also meant even more impossible beauty standards for women and more shame for daring to participate in beauty rituals. "According to medieval religious ideology, wearing makeup was not only the deceitful and immoral – it was a crime against God" (p. 60). The other interesting, albeit twisted way Christianity affected beauty is the relentless belief that unblemished skin = moral person. Something as innocuous as freckles were the mark of the devil, and most women went to great lengths to get rid of them or cover them so as not be accused of being a witch. I shudder thinking about those who were affected by acne.
Chapter 4, which discusses beauty in the late 15th and early 16th centuries (i.e., approximately the Renaissance) presents the continuation of certain beauty standards – pale, unblemished skin on both the face and hands, a high forehead, barely there blush and a hint of natural color on the lips- as well as judgement of those who wore cosmetics. As we saw previously, it's the old "look perfect but don't use makeup to achieve said perfection" deal – women who wore makeup were viewed as dishonest, vain sinners. But one's looks mattered greatly in the acquisition of a husband, so many women didn't have a choice. "Clearly a woman had to get her makeup just right not simply for maximum effect but to avoid getting it wrong and spoiling the illusion of youth and beauty entirely, a fault that could cost her dearly in terms of wealth, status and security" (p. 94).
However, there were some notable differences between the Renaissance and medieval periods. For starters, due to inventions such as the printing press, beauty recipes were able to be much more widely disseminated than they were previously. Increased trade meant more people could get their hands on ingredients for these recipes. Both of these developments led to women below the higher rungs of society (i.e. the middle class) to start wearing cosmetics. So widespread was cosmetics usage at this point, Stewart notes, that the question became what kind of makeup to wear instead of whether to wear it at all.
This chapter was probably the most similar to those on Renaissance beauty in Sarah Jane Downing's book, Beauty and Cosmetics: 1550-1950. Given the lack of information regarding cosmetics during this time period, both authors had to draw on the same sources to describe beauty habits. However, as with Eldridge, the approaches Downing and Stewart take are slightly different. Once again, Stewart opts for a straighter historical approach whereas Downing looks more to paintings and literature of the time, and doesn't take quite as deep a dive into the larger social and economic forces at work. There's also not much overlap between the descriptions of recipes and techniques, as you'll find different ones in each book. For example, one that was mentioned only in passing in Downing's book was using egg white to set makeup. I'm thinking of it as a early version of an illuminating setting spray (although obviously it was brushed on, not sprayed in a bottle) as it lent a slightly luminous, glazed sheen. Stewart points out that it also caused one's face to crack, thereby eliminating the wearer's ability to make any sort of facial expression. It seems certain beauty treatments, whether egg white or Botox, occasionally come with the side effect of suppressing women's expression of emotion. Coincidence? I think not.
Chapters 5 and 6 are tidily sequential, discussing beauty during the the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively. As in the Renaissance, both eras witnessed significant growth in the number of women who wore makeup due to technological advances and increased trade. Growing literacy rates drove demand for the new medium of ladies' magazines. Pharmacies selling raw materials to make beauty treatments had started to crop up in the 17th century and their numbers increased dramatically by the beginning of the 18th century. Not only that, pharmacies and chemists started offering their own pre-made formulas, and these goods became commercially exported to other countries. The widespread sale of these products came with several undesirable effects: counterfeit cosmetics and downright false claims about the product's efficacy.
The 1700s also saw the rise of excessive, decidedly unnatural makeup being worn by members of the aristocracy in both France and England, followed by a post-French Revolution return to more subtle makeup in the early 1800s. This brings us to Chapter 7, which outlines the myriad changes leading to what would become the modern beauty industry, including department stores, industrialization and the new commercial market of the U.S. As for beauty standards, a natural look was still strongly preferred by both men and women, with the emphasis in terms of products on skincare rather than color cosmetics. Here's a literal lightbulb moment: despite my research on Shiseido's color-correcting powders, in which I learned some were meant to counterbalance the effects of harsh lighting, I had completely overlooked the influence of artificial light on the skyrocketing production of face powders. "Suffice it to say that in the early years of the twentieth century, the use of artificial light in homes of the wealthy as well as in public places such as theatres and concert halls would become more widespread, in the latter years of the nineteenth century there was already an understanding that to make the best impression, makeup needed adjusting to suit the light, whether it be natural or artificial" (p.198).
Chapter 8 leads us into the 20th century. While there are more detailed accounts of makeup during this time, Stewart does an excellent job describing the major cultural and technological influences that shaped modern beauty trends and the industry as a whole. I was very impressed with how she was able to narrow down the key points about 20th century beauty without regurgitating or simply summarizing other people's work. Some of the information presented is familiar, of course, but the manner in which it's arranged and categorized sets it apart. It just goes to show that everyone's individual background equals an infinite number of ways to tell the story of makeup.
I'm partial to this chapter since the items I took photos of for the book are all from the 20th century. :)
Here are some powder boxes on the dust jacket.
While I was deliriously happy to see some of the Museum's items in a real published book and get credited for them, I was also pleased to see photos of other pieces as well. Their inclusion in addition to illustrations was a bit of an upgrade to Stewart's previous book. This is a minor issue to be sure, as I believe solid writing more than makes up for a lack of photos, but they are a nice touch if available.
The last chapter serves as an addendum in which Stewart reflects on how the past, present and future of beauty are linked, noting that while some things have stayed the same – the use of ancient ingredients in modern formulas, the connection between health and beauty – 21st century attitudes towards cosmetics represent a significant change from earlier times.
Overall, this is a more scholarly history of makeup than we've seen before, but by no means dry and boring. Stewart's gift for wading through hundreds of historical documents and neatly consolidating the major social, economic and cultural forces that shaped makeup's history, all while sharing fascinating snippets such as ancient beauty recipes and anecdotes from people who lived during the various eras she covered, makes for a thoroughly engaging read.
