History of Makeup

Makeup in the 1950's

Whenever today's Hollywood starlets refer to a traditional old school glamour, 1950's makeup and style is what they are talking about. During the 50's, beauty trends reached a completely new level and women everywhere participated by utilizing revolutionary new colours, products and techniques.

The advent of colour motion pictures is what led to an explosion of 1950's makeup. After years of light glamour, stars on the big screen suddenly appeared with perfect faces. Women everywhere wanted the same thing. Because of this Max Factor invented "Pan Cake", a foundation used to mimic what was being used on the big screen, and new lines of brightly coloured eyeshadows and lipsticks. Similar to today's products, Pan Cake was applied to skin to cover up any imperfections in a quest to achieve a movie-star like standard of beauty.

Women's magazine's began featuring guides to makeup application and women everywhere started to experiment with cosmetics. Pan Cake would be applied to neutralize the face. Then the mixing of colours would begin and a bold, colourful canvas would emerge in the form of cherry lips, rosy cheeks and neutral toned eyelids. It was later in the decade when companies began adding titanium to their products to tone down the bright colour of many products, resulting in a more natural look.

This was the decade of the fashionable, glamorous homemaker. Women began baking apple pies and cleaning the house in heels, dresses and fully made up faces. Cosmetic companies capitalized on this emerging trend and targeted ads towards married women who had to look good for their husbands.