Colour in cosmetics

Nevertheless, like so many needs that are purely feminine, the industry was started by a few female enthusiasts who gave women what they wanted rather than what was considered ladylike and proper.

In the USA the cosmetic industry grew rapidly, possibly owing to the presence of two outstanding enthusiasts, Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, but also because of the much higher level of prosperity in that country. By the mid 1930s, the amount of cosmetics sold in the USA was sufficiently high to persuade the Federal Government that cosmetics should be included with food and drugs as consumer articles in need of legislative control.

The cosmetic industry as we know it today began to take shape after the First World War, an event that produced a general upheaval in moral values, resulting in a more tolerant attitude to make-up. The emergence of a large female labour force meant that working- and middle-class women, as well as the aristocracy, could purchase cosmetics.