A little about my past and how I started collecting vintage cosmetics.
Welcome to my very first blog post,
I want to start this Journal by sharing how I ended up collecting.
“Vintage Makeup tells women's history.”
I grew up in a small town in New Brunswick, Canada, when I was young at some point we lived in an ancient-style house where there was an old attic, you know the type that you have to pull the stairs down and walk up. Since I was a bit of a loner and very curious, I use to love going up there and found old books, photographs along with objects from previous owners. Since I can remember, I always had a fascination for things of the past.
Compacts are Keepsakes
In young adulthood, I started going to flea markets, antique stores, bazaars.. anywhere I could discover objects that made me dream of another time, I was attracted to the mystery of not knowing the story behind them.. who it belonged to and how it ended up there. One time, I found a beautiful double mirror compact with a chocolate Butterfly on it, the wings had multiple coloured rhinestones on them, I purchased it as a gift for my older sister that adores butterflies, she loved it so much and always kept it in her makeup bag. Later on, I also found a special one for my mom, decorated with a beautiful golden orange flower and centred rhinestones, it also had a bumblebee and a purple butterfly. My mother keeps it in her purse ever since I offered it to her, compacts are special gifts we offer to the women we love and they become precious keepsakes.
“There used to be pride in the packaging”
In mid-2020 I was at the McCord Museum in Montreal, Canada (where I live now) with my sweetheart to see the Christian Dior - Fashion Exhibition, part of the exhibit had vintage makeup and I was instantly drawn in! I fell in love with the 1955 Obelisk Crystal lipstick inspired by "Place de la Concorde" it's just stunning!
After the exposition I went to the Museum Boutique, while looking around I fell upon a small glass display where I saw a selection of vintage compacts, one was a 1950's mother of pearl powder compact priced at 25$, I just loved it and took it home, that was my very first vintage makeup purchase. My obsession grew from there, the geek in me started researching and I fell upon a world full of interesting stories about the history of makeup.
In my research, I found many books and they started rolling in the mail.. this was during the debut of the pandemic so I had plenty of time to read and study my new passion, one of the books I ordered was 'Face Paint' The History of Makeup by Lisa Eldridge, world-leading Makeup Artist and a collector since the mid-Nineties. She has the largest vintage makeup collection I have ever seen and she owns a very rare compact based on an illustration by Salvador Dalí. It’s the holy grail of compact collecting, called ‘Bird in Hand’, with a lipstick that comes out of the head and wings that spread to reveal powders.
As for my collection, I obviously don't have hundreds (yet..) since I only started towards the end of 2020 and I select each of my pieces with care. I'm always on the lookout for compacts that contain original powder and rouge, the makeup artist in me considers this - research. I get to see, feel and even smell the different pigments, I'm often surprised that some 100-year-old compact still has the scent of Violet or Creamy Rose. The colours were also bright and so richly pigmented, of course, they were not vegan back then and the formulas they used were probably harmful. I currently collect compacts that are mainly from the 1920s to the 1960s and have a weak spot for those eras with strong history on how makeup dramatically changed throughout the history of women's lives.
I will definitely be sharing these fascinating stories on how makeup from these eras impacted today's beauty industry.
Are you also fascinated by the beauty of the past?
Yours truly,
Mélanie
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