History of Make-up

Make-up dates back thousands of years ago back to the Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks and Romans. According to archaeological evidence the Egyptians and Romans began creating cosmetic products using dangerous matter like mercury and white lead. Egyptians had many ideas in order to produce make-up, such as kohl, which was used as an eyeliner.

It is made up of lead, copper, burned almonds, soot, and other ingredients.Egyptians thought that eye make-up could ward off evil spirits and even improve their eye sight. Poor people even went out their way to ensure they could wear eye make-up.

Furthermore, Chinese people began to produce some sort of make-up in order to represent social class. They used gum Arabic, gelatin, egg and beeswax to create a stain to put onto their finger nails. People with coloured nails represented a higher social class, while the lower class were forbidden to colour-stain their nails.

In Japan geisha made lipstick out of crushed safflower petals to define their lips, eyebrows and eyes. Bintsuke wax was also used by geisha as a makeup base.

So you see make-up dates back over as much as 6000 years ago, where many parts of the world began to create products and utensils in order to produce make-up for mythical, cultural reasons and even for identification!