Maybelline lifts Women's Spirits in 1915.

Lash-Brow-Ine was introduced in 1915, at a time when women, were fighting to be recognized as individuals.

Vogue magazine cover, Christmas, 1915, depicting

the image of an ideal lady.

Everyone looked alike, no real individuality in 1915. The world was still very Victorian Age.

 Than, D W Griffith's Birth of a Nation,  proved extremely controversial, with its negative depiction of Black Americans and their supporters, and its positive portrayal of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as women being abused.

Click on this video to view some of the most controversial themes in D W Griffith's 1915 Birth of a Nation.

In 1915 a course of events led to change - a parting of the Red Sea, that cleared the the way for Maybelline, to be born and women to have a voice.

January 12

House of Representatives rejects proposal to give women right to vote

February 8

"Birth of a Nation" opens at Clune's Auditorium in LA.

May 7

Lusitania sunk by German submarine; 1198 lives lost

October 9

Louis Kaufmans "Unchastened Woman," premieres in New York City

October 23

25,000 women march in New York City, demanding right to vote

December 4

Ku Klux Klan receives charter from Fulton County Ga

December 16

Albert Einstein publishes the General Theory of Relativity LASH-BROW-INE IS BORN!!!!

Tom Lyle Williams, formed Maybell Laboratories and Lash-Brow-Ine's first little ad, appeared in The Police Gazette magazine.  

From the looks of what was going on at the time, you'd think there would be a slim chance for Lash-Brow-Ine, to be accepted, but women were ripe for expressing themselves, and the product took off way beyond Tom Lyle, Noel and Mabel's greatest expectations.

Read the whole wonderful saga, in The Maybelline Story.  Signed copies with Hedy Lamarr make-up bag will be available very soon.

Maybelline during Prohibition and Hollywood's Heyday -1920's.

Women became aware of Lash-Brow-Ine, as Hollywood  broke the Victorian code of sexual silence. 

Risque photographs in the early 1900's revealed skin, as well as theatrical make-up - still not accepted on the street yet!

Hollywood introduced a new standard of beauty through the lens of a camera, and the public slowly replaced virtue - as a measure of beauty - for vanity.

Tom Lyle, through Hollywood Star endorsements, promoted Lash-Brow-Ine, as films were being pumped out and sent to theaters all over the country.

In 1920, Gloria Swanson, one of Hollywood's biggest Stars, endorsed Lash-Brow-Ine - raising the bar for courageous women to makeup their eyes - the same year women got the vote and Prohibition became the Law of the land.

Read more about Hollywood Silent Film Stars, Lash-Brow-Ine and Maybelline in The Maybelline Story.

Watch PBS PROHIBITION (click here)

Check out the trailer for Season 3, Boardwalk Empire, and get the feeling of Prohibition and the 1920's. 

 

The Maybelline Story, also captures Prohibition in gangland Chicago and Hollywood.  Be sure to purchase a copy at www.maybelliebook.com

Maybelline's little sister Lash-Brow-Ine in 1915.

                                       Before Maybelline
                 there was Lash-Brow-Ine.

"Before and After" ad for Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

 In 1915, women were just starting to accept cosmetics again, after avoiding them during the Victorian era. Creams and powders prevailed on the market; however, eye make-up remained all but taboo.  In England, social constraints against cosmetics, including lash color, persisted well into the Victorian age, though business was brisk in back-alley beauty services. 

Proper English ladies of the nineteenth century considered
make–up to be off-limits, the province of prostitutes whose penchant for cosmetics earned them the label “painted women.”  Viewed as appropriate only for prostitutes and music-hall performers, make-up was so forbidden in
Victorian society a man could divorce his wife for wearing it.

Directions inside a box of Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

While the American colonies were under British rule, the use of white powder, rouge and lipstick was brisk. After the revolution, cosmetics became political. For example, an unpainted face was a sign of a good Republican.
Women were expected to pinch their cheeks and bite their lips if they hoped to brighten their faces. Men enjoyed greater leeway. They could and did, dye and condition their air, mustaches and sideburns, often with a touch-up dye for graying hair called Mascaro, from which Tom Later derived the word mascara.

Yet, the onset of the silent movies in the early 1900’s was changing the way society viewed cosmetics, as alluring actresses such as Theda Bara and other screen stars glamorized the painted look once associated with prostitution.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra, in 1917

Women began to enter the work force and began to build independent lives for themselves, making fashion and beauty a bit more robust.  At the same time, women were beginning to organize for their political rights, holding suffragist rallies for right to vote. In New York in 1913, more than one parade of Suffragettes marched down Fifth Avenue past a salon owned by a woman named Elizabeth Arden.  Arden in New York, along with Helena Rubinstein in England, opened the first beauty salons in the cosmetics business, specializing solely in skin products.


Read more about the birth of Lash-Brow-Ine and Maybelline in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.  You can now purchase an autographed cope directly from me by clicking on maybellinestory.com under the picture of the book. 

I will be posting my radio interview on Voice America next Monday, and will be doing the Dare to Dream radio show on May 11th.  Stay tuned for more exciting tid bits and Maybelline trivia from those wonderful days gone by.