Consumers have come to expect a good measure of dishonesty in makeup marketing. But given the lack of strict regulations for cosmetics labeling in the U.S. ("clean" beauty, anyone?), companies have considerably more freedom to concoct some rather outlandish claims,... Read more →

Color coordination is just one of many facets of the vast and complex makeup-fashion relationship. This post will attempt to outline the trajectory of this concept from the 1920s through the early 1960s and examine how it was being marketed,... Read more →

Introduction Welcome the Makeup Museum's spring 2020 exhibition! "Soaring Beauty: The Butterfly in Modern Cosmetics" explores the many ways butterfly imagery is used across all aspects of beauty culture. For 100 years the butterfly has been an endless source of... Read more →

Around this time 2 years ago I got my first tattoos. In honor of that momentous occasion, I thought I'd take a look at a vintage brand that featured some truly wild advertising. I had come across Tattoo years ago,... Read more →

"It never dawned on me not to do something because I was a woman...I thought nothing of approaching men like Vincent Bendix, the airplane manufacturer for whom the transcontinental air race was named, to explain my position: 'I can fly... Read more →

As usual, I forget exactly what I was searching for at newspapers.com when, about a month ago, I stumbled across a very interesting article from 1938. I know the search term must have included Richard Hudnut's name, but beyond that... Read more →

It's the most wonderful time of the year...to look at vintage Christmas makeup ads, that is! You know I can't get enough of these, so here's a quick roundup (in no particular order) of some I added to the Museum's... Read more →

I much prefer email for inquiries but am always excited to receive them in any format, so when someone Tweeted at me last year to request any information on the vintage item below I eagerly began searching. The person who... Read more →

The life of a makeup museum curator is insanely glamorous. For example, a lot of people go out on Friday nights, but not me - I have way more thrilling plans. I usually browse for vintage makeup at Ebay and... Read more →

I was originally going to write a meatier post about the history of tanning that included sunless tanning, but there's actually been plenty of research already. Rather than essentially re-writing what's already out there I decided to go the more... Read more →