I love vintage makeup products! Vintage makeup is back in a big way nowadays. With the popularity of pinup, car culture, and burlesque revival, women are embracing vintage makeup styles like never before.
This trend shows no sign of going away! Many products have popped up to fuel this fascination with vintage beauty.
I can think of no other makeup brand that captures the look and feel of true makeup from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s than Besame. More about them in a bit.
I have been in love with vintage makeup and hair as long as I can remember. As a child I was obsessed with old movies, and particularly technicolor movie goddesses from the 40s and 50s: Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, and Betty Grable. For more information on burlesque and pinup makeup and hair, see my other blog posts.
What was most striking about these larger than life goddesses were the red lips! They wore dense, velvety shades of red lipstick, always overdrawn and stylized, and the colors were other-worldly.
Today’s most famous vintage glamour girl.
My favorite modern day glamour girl has to be the ultra talented and gorgeous Dita Von Teese. She famously transformed herself from a shy girl from a Michigan farm town into a striking vintage bombshell.
She loves vintage makeup products, and her beauty secrets and techniques have become world famous, as have some of her books.
In addition to her books, she has her own lingerie line, and her own red lipstick. I also read that she favors Dior’s Diorific lipstick in dolce vita.
Look at the gorgeous packaging on this one! It’s amazing to see modern beauty products focusing on vintage inspired, sculptural packaging.
What is the most used makeup product in the world?
Well, the answer to that has to be lipstick! In my years of being a red lipstick fan I have worn many brands and textures.
As a pinup and vintage makeup artist I put red on my clients everyday. In attempting to get that authentic vintage look I have used it all!
Can you re-use vintage makeup products?
Well I don’t recommend it, but when I was in college I found an old unopened tube of vintage red lipstick in a friend’s grandmother’s attic. It must have been from the 40s or 50s, and I was eager to use it!
Let me tell you.. It was a GAME CHANGER. I had never before experienced dense, velvety , deeply saturated matte red lipstick like this.
The color was a saturated garnet deep matte red and I used that whole tube. It was gorgeous.
Finding Besame Cosmetics changed my life.
Since I love vintage makeup products so much, and I spent many years trying to find something similar to that lipstick and failing.
I finally found BESAME! This was the closest to that original vintage lipstick that I have ever found.
Besame’s founder Gabriela Hernandez has done her homework. This lipstick is accurate to the time period in every respect!
The colors are myriad, first of all. She really did her research in recreating colors from different eras.
There is even the exact red that Lucille Ball favored in I love Lucy, which is called Love that Redhead.
And the textures! These lipsticks layer perfectly and are DENSE, VELVETY and MATTE. They absolutely resemble the true vintage lipstick I had found in college.
The tube is the same too. It’s the gold, rounded end tube that was so favored in the 40s and 50s.
Even agent Peggy Carter of Marvel comics and the movie has her own namesake lipstick at Besame. It takes you back to the WWII era.
And the Besame store in Burbank is like a vintage makeup museum.
There are glass cases with historic vintage makeup, and their main store cases showcase their famous line of lipsticks, powders, rouge, and mascara.
I am just passionate about vintage makeup and hair, and vintage inspired makeup products. Look for more blogs to come on this subject. Once again, if you have an idea for a blog post idea, please feel free to comment.
Hi there! My name is Stacy Lande, and I am a Los Angeles based hair and makeup artist. I am in love with the vintage style, and have been transforming women into the most glamorous versions of themselves for weddings, events and photo shoots since 2009.
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