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A compelling story, which over the centuries has evolved and modified according to the tastes and preferences of the populations: everything you need to know about mascara, from its origins to the present day.
The history of mascara
Mascara has a very ancient history, which takes you back in time to theAncient Egypt.
In fact, it seems that men and women used to color their eyes and lashes with black powder, with the aim of protecting themselves from the sun’s rays. This compound, called kajal or kohl it was made up of some substances including malachite, antimony and galena. Animal fats or beeswax were used to tie everything together.
This Egyptian tradition also carried over to theAncient Rome, in which people used to color their eyes with kohl, to which burnt cork was added.
Everything changed the advent of the Middle Ages, a long period in which the eyelashes no longer had a strong importance, which was given instead to the forehead. Precisely for this reason the technique of applying the kohl was abandoned for centuries.
In the ‘500 with the ascent to the throne of England of the Queen Elizabeth I, its colors became fashionable.
The women then began to dye their hair and eyelashes red, to look like her, enhancing a clean and ethereal beauty.
Taking a time jump of more than two centuries, we arrive at the Victorian age, an era in which mascara had for the first time ever a vague resemblance to the product used today. The invention is due to Eugène Rimmel, who invented what can be considered the first non-toxic commercial mascara. The extent of his discovery was such that in some countries, including Italy, a synonym for mascara is precisely the word Rimmel.
From the twentieth century to the present day
Rimmel’s children inherited their father’s company at the beginning of the twentieth century and launched a line of make-up products on the market, with particular attention to those for the eyes. Among them stood out, in fact, the rimmel.
Almost simultaneously, in Chicago, the pharmacist and chemist Thomas Williams, observing his sister who tried to emphasize the look using Vaseline on the lashes and had an intuition that led to the formation of the Maybelline brand. The entire story of the birth of mascara is told on the company’s website. In fact, it seems that Thomas, wanting to help his sister bewitch the man she was in love with, added powdered coal to the vaseline. All this was a great success, so much so that in 1915 Thomas Williams, in honor of his sister Maybel, founded the Maybelline. Initially the only product sold locally was a mascara called Lash-Brown-Ine. Two years, in 1917, Williams introduced the Maybelline Cake Mascara, the first eye cosmetic designed for daily use. Initially sold only by mail order, it expanded its distribution network when many women began asking for it at various pharmacies.
Between the forties and the fifties, mascara played a fundamental role in female make-up, although it was still exclusively in the form of a paste to be applied with a brush. The great invention of the pipe cleaner is due to Helena Rubinstein. which in 1957 launched his own on the market Mascara-Matic. The product therefore, just as it still is today, was in a small bottle, from which a brush took it automatically, to then be simply applied to the lashes.
In the following decades the experiments continued, so much so that colored mascaras were invented by Revlon in 1960. To date, there are endless formulas and different types of mascara. From waterproof products to long-lasting ones, from those to create volume to those that promise a super black effect. But not only that, the brush is of fundamental importance, which according to the different shapes has different properties.
In short, the history of mascara, which can be considered the cosmetic par excellence, it’s really exciting. In fact, it starts from far away, but it unites women and men of different eras with the desire to have a more intense look and long eyelashes.
