Maybelline's Success Story a lost thread in America's Fabric.

Wonder Company of the 20th Century.

was spending $200,000 a year in advertising, with Maybelline ads appearing in forty popular magazines as well as Sunday newspaper supplements and specialized journals such as Theater and Photoplay. Between 1915 and 1929, he’d spent over a million dollars to advertise Maybelline. His little eye beautifier now had wide distribution in the United States and Canada.  Everywhere you went, close-up photos of eyes darkened with Maybelline projected a provocative--but no longer sinful--eroticism.

Tom Lyle Williams in 1929, from an article in a trade magazine.

In fact Tom Lyle had just launched his 1929 “Springtime is Maybelline Time!” campaign, featuring an idealized lovely young miss looking up adoringly at her man through starry eyes. The offers to vendors pitched display cartons, each holding a half-dozen eye makeup containers, and urged druggists to try product placement by the soda fountain, “forcing extra sales.” Tom Lyle felt that the ad would assure continued prosperity for the company, meaning he could afford to leave Maybelline in the hands of his brother Noel while he and Emery headed out to California for a few days.

On October 29, 1929, a news flash announced that the Dow industrial average had fallen almost twenty-three percent, and the stock market had lost a total of sixteen billion dollars in value in a month. Sixteen billion dollars.

Tom Lyle knew the stock market crash would be devastating for the country in general, and would certainly ruin many companies. Although Maybelline, as a family-owned business, was not directly affected by the Wall Street disaster, there was no question that the aftermath would be devastating. Who would choose to buy eye cosmetics over food for the family?


The prosperity and opulence of the Roaring Twenties were gone, disappearing along with the vamps who had loaded up with Maybelline’s seventy-five-cent product. In order to keep his company alive in the years to come, Tom Lyle knew he would have to find ways to keep his product in the public eye, yet at a price women could afford. The flashy, flapper look was quickly devolving to a more demure look fit for austere times.


Despite the national situation, he felt good about the future. In fact, when Noel showed him a story in The Wall Street Journal about a brand-new skyscraper being constructed over the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York--the Empire State Building, the tallest structure in the world--Tom Lyle took it as a sign that the bad economy would be only a temporary dip in the road.


He was rarely so wrong. When Emery suggested an ad tie-in to the Empire State Building--Things Are Looking Up, featuring young women with gorgeous eyes gazing up at a new skyscraper--Tom Lyle backed it enthusiastically...until it became clear that for most of the country, things were looking very much down. They abandoned the new ad campaign as the market continued to decline, wages plummeted, and credit dried up. When industrial production also collapsed, many businesses went with it.


But not Maybelline. Although innovative and widespread advertising was responsible for a lot of the company's success over the years, it was not the whole story. So was constant innovation in the lab, and that spring, thanks to the introduction of an improved waterproof eye makeup, total sales rose to $750,000--at a time when most businesses were struggling simply to keep their wallowing businesses afloat.


Read more about Maybelline's success during the worst economic downturn in American history and it's secret to becoming the most successful cosmetic company in the world in

The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.

Happy 89th Birthday Chuck Berry, "Maybellene" has been a hit for 60 years on Maybelline's 100 year Anniversary

Berry's first single release and his first hit. "Maybellene" is considered one of the pioneering rock and roll singles: Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "Rock & roll guitar starts here."[2] The record is an early instance of the complete rock and roll package: youthful subject matter, small guitar-driven combo, clear diction, and an atmosphere of unrelenting excitement.

Spotting a mascara box on the floor of the studio, according to Berry’s partner Johnnie Johnson, Chess said, “Well, hell, let’s name the damn thing Maybellene” altering the spelling to avoid a suit by the cosmetic company.

 In 1988 "Maybellene" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for its influence as a rock and roll single.[8]

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included "Maybellene" in their list of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll list, as well as "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B. Goode".  In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100," the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century as chosen by NPR music editors.

 "Maybellene" is currently ranked as the 81st greatest song of all time, as well as the second best song of 1955, by Acclaimed Music.

Maybellene 1955 liveChuck Berry's Maybellene, ranked # 18, by Rolling Stone magazine's top 500 hits and # 81 in all time rock and roll songs.

Chuck Berry did ask Tom Lyle Williams, for permission to use the Maybelline name.  The spelling is often spelled the same as the mascara.  Read all about it in my book, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.

White Eyeliner a fashion trend by Maybelline New York was introduced in the 1960s

Maybelline New York: Trends To Try

ONLY 1 IN PACK Maybelline Eyestudio Lasting Drama Waterproof Gel Pencil, 606 Cashmere White

from Maybeline New York

Ancient Egyptian women and men

 wearing kohl eyeliner, from the tomb of

 Nakht in Thebes (15th century BC)  .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_liner

My cousin Linda Hughes, Maybelline's namesake, Mabel Williams, granddaughter, and I were discussing the origins of Maybelline Eyeliner.  She did a little research and it turns out our great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, founder of the Maybelline Company was on top of the trends even in the 1920s, when the discovery of, Tutankhamun's tomb introduced the use of eyeliner to the Western world.   Maybelline was the first to package it and the love for colored eyeliner continued to  grow since Maybelline's birth in 1915.

 By the 1960s,  an era associated with many changes     

 in women's fashion, young girls felt freer to apply           

 makeup more liberally. Twiggy once said the secret to    

her exaggerated eyelashes was the Maybelline mascara

 that had bits of hair in it, thickening and lengthening         

her famous lashes.                                                     

I'm going to try the white pencil on my eyes 

and see what I think