What Is The Original Invention Of Makeup

This section includes products such as rouges and lipsticks. The text below provides some historical context and shows how nosotros can employ these products to explore aspects of American history, for example, the links between changes in American feminine identity and the American beauty manufacture. To skip the text and go straight to the objects, CLICK Hither

Shop window advertising sign for face powder, creams, rouges and perfumes

A store window advertising sign depicting a pale-complected, red-lipped beauty idealized at the get-go of the 20th century. Warshaw Collection of Business organization Americana, Archives Centre, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Establishment

In eighteenth century America, both men and women of the upper classes wore brand-up. But, presently afterwards the American Revolution the apply of visible "pigment" cosmetics (colored cosmetic for lips, skin, eyes, and nails) by either gender gradually became socially unacceptable. For most of the nineteenth century few paint cosmetics were manufactured in America. Instead, women relied on recipes that circulated among friends, family, and women'southward magazines; using these recipes, they discreetly prepared lotions, powders, and skin washes to lighten their complexions and diminish the advent of blemishes or freckles. Druggists sold ingredients for these recipes, besides every bit the occasional ready-made preparation. Painting i's face was considered vulgar and was associated with prostitution, and so whatever product used needed to appear "natural." Some women secretly stained their lips and cheeks with pigments from petals or berries, or used ashes to darken eyebrows and eyelashes. Adult female worked to attain the era's ideal feminine identity; a "natural" and demure woman with a pale-complexion, rosy lips and cheeks, and bright optics.

In the 1880s, entrepreneurs began to produce their own lines of corrective products that promised to provide a "natural" look for their customers. Some of these new companies were pocket-sized, adult female-owned businesses that typically used an agent arrangement for distribution as pioneered by the California Perfume Visitor, later rebranded equally Avon. This business organization model allowed many women to make money independently. Besides, more than women were earning wages and buying cosmetics, thereby enlarging the market further. Women could make a living in the burgeoning cosmetics trade as business owners, agents, or factory workers. Most of these entrepreneurs came from fairly humble origins, and some managed to transform their local operations into successful businesses with a wide distribution of their products. Florence Nightingale Graham, for case, was the daughter of tenant farmers, and worked many low-paying jobs before opening a beauty shop for elite clients and reinventing herself as Elizabeth Arden. African American women besides found success through this model, but faced extra obstacles. Many white shop owners refused to consider stocking African American beauty products until successful businesses similar that of Madam C. J. Walker created enough of a need through other distribution channels.

By the 1920s, information technology was stylish for women, specially in cities, to wear more conspicuous make-up. This shift reflected the growing influence of Hollywood and its glamourous new moving-picture show stars, as well as the fashion of theater stars and flappers. "Painted" women could now also identify as respectable women, fifty-fifty as they wore dramatic mascara, eyeliner, dusky eyeshadow, and lipstick similar the stars of the screen. The growing ethnic diversity of the United States likewise influenced how cosmetics companies marketed their products. "Exotic" or "alluring" ethnic stereotypes became inspirations for make-up fashions that ostensibly reflected the American melting pot. White women could experiment with a trendy, exotic identity – and and so wash it off. African American identity, however, was explicitly excluded from this ethnic mingling. In the late 1920s and 1930s, information technology became fashionable for white women to sport the appearance of a "healthy" tan. Previously, a tan had been equated with working-class women who performed outdoor labor; now a tan identified a woman equally modern and good for you, participating in outdoor recreations and leisure. Make-up colors were marketed in various "suntanned" shades, giving women the option to remove the "tan" whenever they wished to repossess a fair complexion.

At this time, the cosmetics business experienced a major shift. Small cosmetics companies, many of which were endemic past women, were replaced by larger corporations. Business models had changed: in lodge to remain competitive and achieve wide distribution, a business had to engage in wholesale bargaining with male person-owned chain drug and department stores. Because women were usually excluded from these distribution channels, virtually female-owned businesses could not compete. By 1930, a small handful of companies controlled 40% of the cosmetics industry. These companies now released thousands of factory-produced, similar products under various brand names.

Female agent selling Mary King cosmetics

1930: The J.R. Watkins Company owned the Mary Male monarch Cosmetics line. Here, agents sell Watkins products and Mary King cosmetics. Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Middle, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Spending on cosmetics increased dramatically when millions of women entered the workforce during the 2d World War, gaining greater independence and purchasing power. Younger women embraced an overtly flirtatious persona, signaled through the conspicuous utilise of bold rouge, powder, lipstick, and nail smoothen. Many working women wore shorter, more than "manly" pilus styles, and make-up was used to reassert femininity. When nylon stockings became unavailable because of war-time commodity shortages, women turned to leg brand-up—paint-on hosiery maintained the illusion of nylon-clad legs. Cosmetics advertisements and war machine recruiting campaigns during the war emphasized women's dual responsibilities: support the state of war endeavor and maintain one's feminine identity through the use of make-up. Regime-produced posters encouraging women to bring together the war effort depicted female nurses and factory workers in bright red lipstick and dark mascara. Makeup, especially lipstick, had become such an essential component of American femininity, that the federal regime quickly rescinded its wartime materials-rationing restrictions on cosmetics manufacturers in club to encourage employ of make-up. As Kathy Peiss writes in "Hope in a Jar," the utilise of make-up had go "an assertion of American national identity."

After the war, lxxx-90% of American women wore lipstick, and companies similar Avon and Revlon capitalized on this now-ingrained fashion. By the 1950s and 1960s, teenage girls were commonly wearing brand-up and cosmetic companies devised carve up marketing campaigns to target the younger age groups.

In the late 1960s, using makeup became politicized. Counter-cultural movements celebrated ideals of natural beauty, including a rejection of make-upwards altogether. Cosmetics companies returned to advertisements that claimed that their products provided a "natural" look. These ethics still relied on racial whiteness as the ground of feminine beauty, but under continued pressure from women of colour, major cosmetics firms began to cater to the African American market, not merely by producing products geared toward blackness women (oftentimes under separate brands), but also by hiring black women every bit sales agents. However, the so-called "ethnic" segment of the cosmetic market place remained small, making up but 2.3% of full sales in 1977.

1977 Revlon advertising campaign for the

1977 Revlon ad campaign for the "Polished Ambers collection...an heady collection for black women." Revlon Advertizement Collection, Archives Heart, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Bibliography ~ see the Bibliography Section for a total list of the references used in the making if this Object Group. However, the Make-up section relied on the following references:

Gill, Tiffany Thou. Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women'due south Activism in the Beauty Industry. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Jones, Geoffrey. Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Dazzler Industry. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Jones, Geoffrey. "Blonde and Bluish-eyed? Globalizing Dazzler, c.1945–c.19801." The Economical History Review 61, no. 1 (February 1, 2008): 125–54. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00388.x.

Morris, Edwin T. Fragrance: The Story of Perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel. New York: Scribner, 1984.

Peiss, Kathy Lee. Promise in a Jar: The Making of America'south Dazzler Culture. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998.

Scranton, Philip. Dazzler and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America. New York: Routledge, 2001.