Make(ing) Up History: Red Lipstick

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then would the mouth be the doors to the mind? If that is the case, then how we decorate these “doors” must say a lot about who we are and what we think. Lipstick is something I have already expressed my passion for in my previous article but despite this, I still find myself struggling with one shade in particular: red. I think many others out there can attest to the difficulty of finding that perfect shade of red in a sea of crimsons, berries, and corals. So how did we get to this overwhelmingly large variety of red lipstick?

Scientifically, red is the longest wavelength of color a person can perceive, unsurprisingly making this a popular makeup shade for centuries. Evidence shows that people from Ancient Greece to Ancient China used a lip and cheek product formulated with red ochre or cochineal and animal fat. The color red often symbolizes health, vitality and in many Eastern cultures, happiness, which illustrates how lip makeup endures in eras when the risk of disease is high and the perception of health and youth is crucial to society. The trend of reddened lips persisted when Queen Elizabeth I donned a face of a white lead compound to hide her smallpox scars, and bright red lips in contrast to create an illusion of health and longevity. Unfortunately, after her death and the end of her reign, such bold lip coloring fell out of favor (thanks to the patriarchy) with only a slight pinking of lips from plant dyes remaining for the next 300 years. 

In 1884, Guerlain introduced a redesigned way of applying lip color – as a stick. Even with this convenient new creation, lipstick would not rise in popularity until 1912 when Elizabeth Arden handed out red lipstick outside her salon in New York to women during a march for the Suffragette Movement. In the years before the Second World War, lipstick became mainstream with fashion houses like Chanel who added cosmetics to their product line causing magazines like Vogue to state that “applying lipstick was one of the most important gestures of the century” in their 1933 “Beauty Book.”

The outbreak of World War II made red lipstick an everyday staple for women. In a time when nothing was normal, having a face accentuated with red lips was seen as a morale booster and gave a sense of normalcy to the women who worked and the men who fought. Wearing lipstick, even if only made from beet juice, was also seen as an act of defiance against Hitler and the Nazi regime, as it was known that Hitler despised makeup and preferred a natural look that favored his aryan ideals. 

After the war, red lipstick took center stage, no longer acting as a tool for morale and defiance, but as an accessory for femininity in Dior’s “New Look” and trademark red color. It was an era of novelty tubes and compacts, when shades became more vibrant and exploratory allowing the user to choose a shade based off of their hair, skin tone, or nail color. The Hollywood glamour of people like Marilyn Monroe only perpetuated the idea of red lipstick as a mode of sensuality and luxury. Although society wanted that sense of luxury after their deprivation of commerce during the war, couture brands like Chanel weren’t always attainable to the everyday woman. However, with the right advertising, that sensual, lavish, Marilyn-esque glamour could be sold to the masses like with Revlon’s 1952 debut of their “Fire and Ice” lipstick that is still sold today. 

In the following decades, red lipstick was forced to share the spotlight with a variety of new shades and lip makeup trends but continued to have moments of notoriety as when, for instance, it became a symbol of nonconformity for the female punk rockers of 1970s like Blondie’s Debby Harry, or when the relatively new brand MAC created “Russian Red” specifically for Madonna on her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990.

Now, we live in a world where we have every possible lipstick shade and formula imaginable offered to us at our local Target or Sephora, and we can paint our “doors to the mind” practically any color we like without fear of judgement or social ruin. Yet, even with all of this variety there will always be a demand for that one shade of red that evokes vitality, defiance, femininity, and sensuality all while imbuing the history of the world in one three inch tube. So, what shade of history will you choose to wear today?

Written by Erika Miller

Bibliography

Eldridge, Lisa. Face Paint: The Story of Makeup. New York: Abrams Books, 2015

Felder, Rachel. Red Lipstick: An Ode to a Beauty Icon. HarperCollins Publishers, 2019

Stewart, Susan. Painted Faces: A Colorful History of Cosmetics. Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2017