96 Fun Facts About Makeup

The words cosmetics and cosmos share the Greek root kosmos, which meant what?

Order and ornament: to the Greeks, kosmein was to arrange or adorn. Pythagoras is said to have been the first to call the universe a kosmos, for its orderliness.

Which red pigment, long used in lipstick, is made from crushed cochineal insects?

Carmine comes from carminic acid, which the cochineal, a scale insect that lives on prickly pear cacti, produces to put off predators.

Which singer and actress founded the makeup brand Rare Beauty in 2020?

Selena Gomez named the brand after her album Rare. Part of its sales goes to the Rare Impact Fund, which she set up to pay for mental health services.

Which makeup brand is best known for its Naked eyeshadow palettes?

Urban Decay was started in 1996 by Sandy Lerner, a co-founder of Cisco Systems, as a revolt against pink and beige: its tag line asked, 'Does pink make you puke?'

Venetian ceruse, the prized 16th-century skin whitener, was made from water, vinegar and what?

Lead gave ceruse its smooth white finish and its danger: it damaged skin and thinned hair. The London society beauty Maria, Countess of Coventry, is believed to have died of it in 1760.

Which queen is most associated with the fashion for bright red lips and a stark white face?

Elizabeth I's portraits made the look official. In her last years painters worked from an approved 'Mask of Youth', so the ageing queen kept the same smooth white face on canvas.

Which Japanese cosmetics giant began in 1872 as a Western-style pharmacy in Tokyo?

Shiseido was opened by Arinobu Fukuhara, once head pharmacist to the Japanese navy. After a trip to America and Europe he put a soda fountain in the shop, which grew into the Shiseido Parlour restaurants.

Which Parisian perfume house is widely credited with selling the first lipstick in stick form?

Guerlain is said to have launched it in 1870 as Ne m'oubliez pas, 'forget me not'. The credit is traditional: one historian of cosmetics reports finding no first-hand evidence for it.

Which allergy-tested skincare and makeup brand did the Estée Lauder company launch in 1968?

Clinique was shaped by Evelyn Lauder, Estée's daughter-in-law, who later helped turn the pink ribbon into the symbol of breast cancer awareness.

Which drugstore makeup brand made the slogan 'Easy, Breezy, Beautiful' famous?

CoverGirl was launched in 1961 by the makers of Noxzema skin cream. Its advertising put the makeup on real cover girls, models from the covers of women's magazines.

Which London cosmetics house gave its name to the word for mascara in Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish?

Rimmel dates from 1834, when the Rimmel family set up as perfumers in London. Eugène Rimmel's dark 'cosmetique', often described as an early mascara, carried the family name into other languages.

Maybelline takes its name from whom?

He saw Mabel darkening her lashes with Vaseline and coal dust and named his 1915 eye beautifier after her.

Which beauty brand did Emily Weiss launch in 2014 on the back of her popular beauty blog?

Glossier grew out of Into the Gloss, the blog Emily Weiss started while she was working at Vogue, and began by selling online only.

Which British makeup artist was made a dame in the 2021 New Year Honours?

Pat McGrath was honoured for services to fashion and beauty and, the citation added, to diversity. She had launched her own line, Pat McGrath Labs, in 2015.

Which cosmetics pioneer, born in Kraków, opened her first salon in Melbourne?

Helena Rubinstein reached Australia in 1896 and was waiting tables in Melbourne before she began selling her face cream, Valaze. Salons in London, Paris and New York followed.

Which beauty pioneer, born Florence Nightingale Graham in Canada, opened her first Fifth Avenue salon in 1910?

Elizabeth Arden kept 'Elizabeth' from a former partner's name, already lettered on the salon, to save on a new sign. The surname is usually said to come from Tennyson's poem Enoch Arden.

The stable of the founder of the Red Door salons won which race in 1947 with Jet Pilot?

The Kentucky Derby went to Jet Pilot, who led from the start. His owner raced as Maine Chance Farm, a name she took from her health and beauty spa in Maine.

What was Estée Lauder's first fragrance, launched in 1953 as a bath oil that doubled as perfume?

Youth-Dew changed how scent was worn: instead of dabbing French perfume behind each ear, women poured it into the bath by the bottle. It put the young company firmly on its feet.

Max Factor arrived from Russia in 1904 and settled in which city, then hosting the World's Fair?

St. Louis was his first American home. He ran a barber's shop there before moving to Los Angeles in 1908, where the film studios became his customers; the tale that a partner robbed him at the fair is unconfirmed.

What was Max Factor's Pan-Cake, created for Technicolor film in the 1930s?

A foundation makeup in cake form, put on with a damp sponge, it went on sale to the public in 1938. Rivals copied it so widely that 'cake make-up' became a product class of its own.

What device did the Max Factor company build in 1939 to test a lipstick's resistance to fading?

A kissing machine was built to prove that Tru-Color, developed under Max Factor Jr. as a smear-proof lipstick, really was as indelible as its advertising promised.

Which consumer-goods giant bought Max Factor from Revlon in 1991?

Procter & Gamble kept Max Factor until a deal agreed in 2015 passed it, along with dozens of its other beauty brands, to Coty.

Revlon was founded in New York in 1932 to sell which single product?

Nail enamel made with pigments instead of dyes gave Revlon opaque shades its rivals lacked. For years the firm was formally the Revlon Nail Enamel Corporation.

Where does the 'L' in Revlon come from?

Chemist Charles Lachman went into partnership with the brothers Charles and Joseph Revson in 1932. To make the name, the founders swapped the S in Revson for his L.

Laneige, Innisfree and Etude are beauty brands from which country?

South Korea's Amorepacific owns all three. Laneige only sounds French: the name was borrowed from 'la neige', snow, for a brand the Korean group launched in 1994.

Which budget makeup brand, founded in Los Angeles in 1999, is named after the Greek goddess of the night?

NYX was started by Toni Ko at 25 with a loan from her parents and a small range of eye and lip pencils. Fifteen years later she sold it for a reported $500 million.

Which company ranked as the world's largest cosmetics maker in 2024?

L'Oréal began far from the makeup counter: the chemist Eugène Schueller founded it in 1909 to sell a hair dye he had formulated himself to the hairdressers of Paris.

MAC Cosmetics was founded in 1984 in which Canadian city?

Toronto is where Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo first made the line for professionals. Toskan said the models then wanted it for their sisters and friends, and word of mouth did the rest.

Which drag queen became the face of MAC Cosmetics in 1994, raising money for its AIDS fund?

RuPaul appeared on billboards in full drag beside the line 'I am the MAC girl'. The fund is fed by MAC's Viva Glam lipsticks, whose entire sale price is given away.

The retailer Sephora is named after which biblical figure?

Zipporah, wife of Moses, is called Séphora in French, and the chain is French: it traces its beginnings to a perfumery in Limoges in 1969.

Coco Chanel is said to have named her perfume No. 5 for which reason?

It was the fifth sample she tried from perfumer Ernest Beaux's numbered vials. Five was already her lucky number: she showed her collections on the fifth of May, 'the fifth month of the year'.

Rihanna's Fenty Beauty, launched in September 2017, was developed with which luxury conglomerate?

LVMH's Kendo division produced the line, with Rihanna holding half of the business. Its Pro Filt'r foundation, made for a very wide range of skin tones, was in heavy demand from its first release.

Kylie Jenner's makeup company began in 2015 by selling which product?

Lip Kits paired a liquid lipstick with a matching liner, and the company was first called Lip Kit by Kylie. Four years later Coty paid $600 million for a 51 percent stake.

Anastasia Beverly Hills, founded by Romanian-born Anastasia Soare, made its name shaping which facial feature?

Eyebrows struck Soare as a neglected feature when she arrived in Los Angeles in 1989. Trained in art history and architecture, she shaped them to each client's bone structure, a method she called the Golden Ratio.

Which nail style was, despite its name, devised in 1970s Hollywood to suit every costume change?

The French manicure was created for film studios by Jeff Pink, founder of the nail brand Orly. He gave it its French name only after taking the look to the Paris catwalks.

Which pop star founded the makeup brand Haus Labs in 2019?

Lady Gaga had already used the name Haus Laboratories for her fragrances. It echoes the Haus of Gaga, the creative team she built in 2008 on the model of Andy Warhol's Factory.

Which US law of 1938 gave the FDA authority over makeup safety?

The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act followed a campaign that featured Lash Lure, an eyelash dye that injured women's eyes and left at least one blind. The FDA showed the case in an exhibit a reporter dubbed the 'American Chamber of Horrors'.

In 1866 Henry Tetlow began making face powder with which harmless white mineral, now common in sunblock?

Zinc oxide gave face powder a clean white without the poisonous pigments that older whitening powders had relied on. Titanium dioxide, its partner in modern sunscreens, was not mass-produced until 1916.

Max Factor's Erace, a stick launched in 1954, was an early version of which everyday cosmetic?

Concealer hides blemishes and under-eye shadows. Erace was one of three concealer sticks launched in America in 1954, all sold hard on television, then a new medium for beauty advertising.

Which beauty subscription service, known for its monthly Glam Bag, did YouTuber Michelle Phan co-found in 2011?

Ipsy grew out of the audience Phan had built with her makeup tutorials. By 2015 the company behind the little monthly bags was valued at more than $500 million.

Which company is credited with introducing the 'lady saleswoman' to the cosmetics trade?

Door-to-door selling by women became a staple of the post-war beauty business.

What is the vermilion powder that married Indian women traditionally apply in the hair parting?

Sindoor was traditionally made from turmeric: treated with lime, the yellow spice turns a deep red. The powder marks a woman as married.

Geisha traditionally reddened their lips with which flower, better known for its cooking oil?

Safflower blooms are usually yellow or orange, yet they hold a red pigment, carthamin, that also colours food. Geisha wore it on the lips and around the eyes.

Which plant dye is used to draw mehndi designs on the hands of brides in South Asia?

Henna is made from the dried, powdered leaves of a shrub and leaves a reddish stain. Ancient Egyptians used it on hair and fingernails, and it has been found on the nails of mummified pharaohs.

Which shade of lipstick gave its name to Revlon's celebrated 1952 advertising campaign?

Fire and Ice was a red for lips and nails. Richard Avedon photographed the model Dorian Leigh for it in a silver sequinned dress and a red cape copied from Balenciaga.

In the old Japanese custom of ohaguro, which part of the body was dyed black?

The teeth were painted with a solution of iron filings and vinegar, mainly by married women of the aristocracy and samurai class. Apprentice geisha in some districts blacken theirs briefly before they qualify.

Which everyday English word, borrowed from Arabic, originally meant the powdered eye cosmetic kohl?

Alcohol comes from al-kuhl, Arabic for 'the kohl'. Alchemists stretched the word to any fine powder, then to distilled essences, long before it meant drink.

Buddy Ebsen had to quit The Wizard of Oz after the makeup for which character poisoned his lungs?

The Tin Man was first silvered with real aluminium dust, which coated Ebsen's lungs and starved his blood of oxygen. Jack Haley took over the role wearing a safer aluminium paste.

During the wartime shortages of the 1940s, women used makeup and drawn-on seams to fake which garment?

Stockings vanished when nylon went to war, so women coloured their legs with lotions and stick cakes, painted a seam line down each one, and even bought spray-on 'liquid hosiery'.

Some 19th-century women ate which poison, mixed with vinegar and chalk, to make their skin fashionably pale?

Arsenic was swallowed to bleach the complexion, because pale skin showed that a woman did not have to work in the fields.

Pearl essence, which gives some cosmetics a pearly shimmer, is made from crystals found where in nature?

Fish scales, first those of a small river fish called the bleak, supply the crystals. The same extract is used to coat imitation pearls.

Members of Clowns International record their unique makeup designs by having them painted onto what?

Eggs have been the register since 1946, when founder Stan Bult began painting members' faces on them. An unwritten rule says no two clowns may share a design.

Which kitchen product stood in for blood in Alfred Hitchcock's black-and-white thriller Psycho?

Chocolate syrup did the job. Because the 1960 film was shot without colour, the shade mattered less than how thickly it ran.

Which American cosmetics company has rewarded its top sellers with pink Cadillacs since the 1960s?

Mary Kay founder Mary Kay Ash bought the first in 1968 and had the Dallas dealer repaint it to match a makeup compact she carried.

Renaissance women are said to have enlarged their pupils with eye drops from which poisonous plant?

Belladonna is Italian for 'beautiful woman', a name Linnaeus kept for the species because of its cosmetic use. Wide pupils were thought alluring.

Leonard Lauder's 'lipstick index' holds that lipstick sales climb during which kind of period?

Recessions make shoppers swap costly dresses for a small treat, the Estée Lauder chairman argued. In the late-2000s slump, though, lipstick sales fell.

Lanolin, the waxy moisturiser found in many lip salves and skin creams, is secreted by which animals?

Sheep ooze the grease from glands in their skin to waterproof their fleece, and it is washed out of the shorn wool. Crude lanolin makes up 5 to 25 per cent of a fresh fleece's weight.

Squalene, an oil used in cosmetics, takes its name from which animals, whose livers were its original source?

Sharks of the genus Squalus gave the oil its name, and deep-water species carry it in their livers at up to 80 per cent. Concern over shark hunting has since pushed makers toward other sources.

Which mineral, the softest on the Mohs hardness scale, is ground into a main ingredient of many cosmetics?

Talc defines 1 on the scale, the softest mineral there is. In powdered form, often mixed with corn starch, it is also sold as baby powder.

Colour-correcting makeup in which shade is dabbed over pimples and broken veins to cancel out redness?

Green correctors counteract the red marks of conditions such as rosacea. Purple ones are used differently, to brighten a sallow, yellowish complexion.

Revlon co-founder Charles Revson said: 'In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the store we sell' what?

Hope was the real product, in his view. Revson was just as blunt about his rivals: 'I don't meet competition. I crush it.'

Which Old Testament queen painted her eyes and dressed her hair to face her enemy Jehu, moments before her death?

Jezebel dressed up to taunt Jehu from a window, and was thrown from it at his command. The scene later made some Christians link cosmetics with vice.

'God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another' is a jab at face-painting in which Shakespeare play?

Hamlet hurls the line at Ophelia in the 'get thee to a nunnery' scene, right after sneering 'I have heard of your paintings too, well enough.'

Which James Bond film claims a woman can die of 'skin suffocation' after being covered in metallic paint?

Goldfinger's gilded victim, played by Shirley Eaton, took an hour and a half to paint and made the cover of Life magazine in November 1964.

Jim Carrey was coached by an expert in enduring torture to cope with the makeup for which role?

The Grinch took up to two and a half hours in the chair each day, which Carrey likened to being buried alive, so producer Brian Grazer hired SEAL Team Six veteran Richard Marcinko to coach him.

Which Robin Williams comedy won the Oscar for Best Makeup for a disguise that took four hours to apply?

Mrs. Doubtfire took the Oscar even though reviews of the film were mixed. Williams later recalled walking through San Francisco in the full makeup and costume.

The Oscar for Best Makeup was created after complaints that which 1980 film had gone unrewarded?

The Elephant Man received no award itself, but the protest worked: the Academy created a competitive makeup category the following year.

Which silent-film star earned the nickname 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' for the makeup he devised himself?

Lon Chaney's self-made faces included the Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923 and the Phantom of the Opera in 1925.

John Chambers, who also made Spock's pointed ears, won an honorary Oscar for the makeup in which 1968 film?

Planet of the Apes earned Chambers the statuette more than a decade before a regular makeup category existed. He later received a CIA medal for helping six Americans escape Iran, the caper retold in Argo.

For his 1916 epic Intolerance, director D. W. Griffith had which beauty aid specially made for actress Seena Owen?

False eyelashes were made from human hair by his wigmaker, because Griffith wanted her eyes to look twice as large. Co-star Lillian Gish recalled Owen arriving one day with them swollen nearly shut.

In the rock band Kiss, which face-painted stage persona belongs to bassist Gene Simmons?

The Demon was one of four comic-book characters the band created with makeup: Paul Stanley became the Starchild, Ace Frehley the Spaceman and Peter Criss the Catman.

Which David Bowie album cover shows a red-and-blue lightning bolt painted across his face?

Aladdin Sane's flash was painted by makeup artist Pierre Laroche, and is said to have been copied from the logo on a rice cooker in the photographer's studio.

Which resin-based adhesive, a theatre staple since the 1870s, do actors use to stick on fake beards and wigs?

Spirit gum is named for its two parts: a 'spirit' solvent and a sticky 'gum' of resin, originally mastic. Performers once bought it from theatrical wig makers.

What name is given to the stark black-and-white face makeup worn by Norwegian black metal bands?

Corpse paint is meant to make musicians look inhuman or dead, and has been called the most identifiable part of the genre's look.

Which makeup technique, once a stage actor's trick, did reality star Kim Kardashian help turn into a craze?

Contouring was used by 16th-century English actors, who put chalk and soot on their faces so that audiences could read their expressions.

Which technique, made famous by drag performers, leaves a thick layer of translucent powder to sit on the skin?

Baking lets the powder soak up facial oils and set the makeup underneath. Special-effects artists now use the same trick to set fake bruises and cuts.

Which Dutch YouTuber shot to fame in 2015 with her video 'The Power of Makeup'?

NikkieTutorials, real name Nikkie de Jager, inspired a wave of copycat videos in which people showed their faces with and without makeup.

Which Syfy competition series, hosted by McKenzie Westmore, pitted prosthetic makeup artists against each other?

Face Off's host came from Hollywood makeup royalty: the Westmore family has worked in film makeup since 1917, and her father Michael mentored the contestants.

The budget makeup brand e.l.f., founded in 2004, takes its name from the initials of which three words?

Eyes, Lips, Face began in June of that year and at first had only partial success getting onto retail shelves, dollar stores among them.

Which British beauty chain did Anita Roddick start in Brighton in 1976, selling products not tested on animals?

The Body Shop first sold its products in urine-sample bottles bought from a nearby hospital. Roddick had too few of them, so she offered refills, and a policy was born.

Which beauty giant, founded in Paris in 1904 by a perfumer, bought a majority stake in Kylie Cosmetics in 2019?

Coty paid 600 million dollars for 51 per cent of Kylie Jenner's company, 115 years after François Coty set up the firm.

On cosmetics packaging, a small open-jar symbol marked with a figure such as '12M' tells the buyer what?

Shelf life once opened is counted in months, so 12M means a year. EU rules ask for the symbol on products that keep for 30 months or more unopened, in place of a best-before date.

Under US law, which is the only class of cosmetic ingredient that needs FDA approval before going on sale?

Color additives are the one exception. No other ingredient needs sign-off before sale, which leaves the maker legally responsible for the product's safety.

The 'BB' in BB cream, first formulated by a German dermatologist in the 1960s, originally stood for what?

Blemish balm was devised by Dr Christine Schrammek to protect her patients' skin after facial peels and surgery, long before it became a makeup-bag staple.

Kumadori, bold stripes of red or blue over a white base, is the stage makeup of which Japanese theatre tradition?

Kabuki actors use the colours as a code: red stripes mark a courageous hero, while blue ones signal a villain or a jealous ghost.

Skull face paint for Mexico's Day of the Dead imitates which elegant skeleton, first etched by José Guadalupe Posada?

La Catrina began as Posada's satire of upper-class women. Diego Rivera later painted her full-length in a mural, turning her into a national symbol.

Thanaka, a cosmetic paste ground from tree bark and worn in circles on the cheeks, is a tradition of which country?

Myanmar's thanaka is made by grinding bark with a little water on a round stone slab, and is sometimes patterned into a leaf shape on each cheek.

The Himba people, who coat their skin and hair in a red paste of butterfat and ochre, live mainly in which country?

Namibia's Himba call the mixture otjize. A 2022 study found that it filters ultraviolet light exceptionally well, shielding wearers from the desert sun.

Julius Caesar wrote that Britons painted themselves blue with 'vitrum', usually translated as which dye plant?

Woad is the usual reading, though vitrum more often means 'glass'. Caesar's point was that the blue made the Britons more frightening in battle.

Which Tokyo street fashion of the 1990s paired a deep artificial tan with white lipstick and white eyeshadow?

Ganguro was a rebellion against the traditional Japanese ideal of pale skin and dark hair. It is said to have faded around 2000, when a craze for light skin took over.

A 1930s French beauty cream boasted of containing thorium and which other radioactive element?

Radium was the selling point of Tho-Radia cream, so the makers signed up a doctor called Alfred Curie as a figurehead. He was no relation to Pierre and Marie.

Which Roman poet, later exiled by Augustus, wrote a verse guide to women's face cosmetics complete with recipes?

Ovid defended makeup when other writers condemned it. Only a hundred lines of his Medicamina Faciei Femineae survive, with five recipes for facial treatments.

Which London stage star of the early 1800s designed the white-faced clown makeup that made 'Joey' a word for clown?

Joseph Grimaldi drew his Clown's wide grin so that it could be seen from the back of Drury Lane, then the biggest auditorium in Europe.

Which mineral, mined partly by child labour in India and Madagascar, gives eyeshadow and lip gloss their shimmer?

Mica reflects and refracts light, which is why it also adds sparkle to car paint and even toothpaste.

Baseball legend Babe Ruth was an early wearer of which grease, smeared on the cheekbones to cut glare from the sun?

Eye black may really work: a 2003 Yale study found the grease cut glare and sharpened contrast, while stick-on strips and petroleum jelly did nothing.

Which American cosmetics retail chain, based in Bolingbrook, Illinois, began in 1990 under a name ending in '3'?

Ulta Beauty started as Ulta3, a name meant to suggest a third choice for shoppers beyond the drugstore and the department store.