Today, Lisa Eldridge, the London-based makeup artist and YouTube sensation, is releasing her first book, Face Paint: The Story of Makeup (Abrams Image), a meditation on the history of cosmetics and the women who wore it best. Beginning with caches of red ochre found in South African caves, which were used as prehistoric makeup, Face Paint takes us through the ancient origins of modern trends—a bold red lip, a slick of black liner—and connects them back to beauty’s present landscape. From the invention of the world’s first mascara to the backstory behind Lauren Hutton’s famous gap-toothed grin, here are six surprising things we learned from the book that have us feeling inspired to dive into our beauty kits.
1. In Ancient Greece, around 800 B.C., Athenian women mixed burned cork, antimony, and soot to concoct a simple brow powder, used to thicken their arches and create the appearance of a unibrow. (The Romans also favored the singular style.) Centuries later, around 1917, New Yorker T. L. Williams purportedly caught his sister Mabel mixing burned cork with petroleum jelly to darken her lashes, which inspired him to launch Lash-Brow-Ine—one of the first mascaras—and his iconic beauty company, Maybelline. Rumor has it that the mascara helped Mabel win her boyfriend back.
2. From the 1500s, French women began carrying gilded tins filled with mouches, small black patches used to ornament their faces and conceal blemishes—think Marie Antoinette and the 18th-century court of Versailles. Made from silk, velvet, satin, or taffeta in heart or circle shapes, their placement was coded: Right cheek meant married; left, engaged. Mistresses wore one by the corner of the eye, while a mouche near the mouth showed you were single.
3. Around 1902, Helena Rubinstein launched her famous Crème Valaze in Australia with the claim that one Dr. Lykusky had concocted the cream with herbs grown in the Carpathian mountains. Years later, she revealed the true recipe to her secretary: mineral oil, vegetable oil, and lanolin, which she scented with pine bark, water lilies, and lavender. Ten pennies procured all the ingredients, but Helena charged 7 shillings and 7 pence because, in her own words, “Women won’t buy anything that cheap!”
4. Though Ancient Egyptian murals had depicted men and women in thick black liner—and archaeologists had found carved ivory cases with burned almond kohl in burial tombs—it was the 1912 discovery of Nefertiti’s bust that brought the exaggerated cat-eye back to life. With the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1923 and the first public exhibition of the limestone-and-stucco head a year later, Egyptomania gripped the world. Elizabeth Taylor’s iconic portrayal of Cleopatra in 1963 only sealed the deal, and dark eye makeup has stayed in style ever since.
5. Discovered by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, a young Lauren Hutton started modeling for Richard Avedon and Irving Penn in the mid-’60s. Hutton would do her own makeup for shoots, and initially tried to hide the gap in her teeth with mortician’s wax and a cap, which kept falling out. Quickly, she learned to embrace her crooked smile, which helped her secure a record 27 Vogue covers, a landmark modeling contract with Revlon, and paved the way for many winning gap-toothed girls—Lara Stone, Georgia May Jagger—to come.
6. Fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba label began selling Technicolor makeup in 1970, revolutionizing the decade’s look with blush, shadows, and face glosses in a staggering range of trippy colors, from acid blue to mustard yellow to shimmering copper. Not surprisingly, David Bowie and his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, were reportedly fans. At the time, the factory couldn’t believe Hulanicki’s requested colors—but then her first brown lipstick sold out in 30 minutes. Two years later, Hulanicki further broadened the beauty boundaries when she debuted the first makeup range designed for women with darker skin. Needless to say, the rest is beauty history.
The post 6 Surprising Lessons From Makeup Artist Lisa Eldridge’s New Beauty Book appeared first on Vogue.
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