Maybelline, 100 years ago!

100 years ago here is what was going on. 

 The ideal woman on the cover of Vogue Magazine, December 15, 1911.

Internatio​nal Women's Day 100th anniversar​y on March 8, 2011, we celebrate a century of hard fought  achievemen​ts for women around the world. 
 

In 1911, Mary Pickford played the stereotype role
 of mothers, ingenues, spurned women, spitfires, slaves, native Americans, and a prostitutes.  However, women began to identify with the "The Girl with the Golden Curls," "Blondilocks" or "The Biograph Girl," and she became the most famous woman in the world. ushering in a new era for women in film.
  

 Owen Moore and Mary Pickford;  from The Lonely Villa (Biograph, 1909)
 
Moore and Pickford married in 1911 and divorce in 1920.
 

Victorian Age, Gibson Girls, 1911.

Image of the helpless, long suffering woman, and the
 tyrannical old man in 1911.

At the same time, all this was going on in 1911,

 a 15 year old boy, named Tom Lyle Williams, bought a second hand motorcycle for $40.00, drove it work, at the nickelodeon, and earned $6.00 a week.  It was here he noticed Mary Pickford and was inspired.  

 
After a year, he sold his motorcycle by advertising it, in the classified section of Popular Mechanics Magazine.  Astounded by the response from people willing to pay $50.00, a young entrepreneur was born, who planned to make advertising his life's work. 
 
At that time Tom Lyle, had no idea the role he'd play in establishing women's identities, for the next 100 years.  Maybelline will be 100 years old in 2015.
 
Read more about Tom Lyle Williams, in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.

Maybelline and the Gibson Girl, 1915.

Queen Victoria set the standard for women at the turn of the Century. The Gibson Girl with hair piled high on her head, a squeaky clean face and a pinch of the cheek for color, was the image set in advertising.  Virtue replaced makeup - while remaining a long suffering childlike woman - was promoted in early silent films.  In other words it was a tough audience when Lash-Brow-Ine was introduced in 1915, and Maybelline in 1916.   How did it make it?

Noel Williams future wife second on left, Frances Allen Williams, 1910.

This was the audience Lash-Brow-Ine faced in 1915.

Lash-Brow-Ine became Maybelline in 1916

Tom Lyle Williams with his father TJ and his sister Mabel, name-sake for Maybelline, 1916.

First Lash-Brow-Ine ad in 1915.

First Maybelline ad in 1916.

First box of Maybelline 1916.

Lash-Brow-Ine and Maybelline advertised in Photoplay magazine here seen with Mary Pickford the ultimate childlike woman in 1915.                                  

It was advertising that made Maybelline the most popular eye beautifier in the world, and it was Tom Lyle Williams who was the King of Advertising from 1915 to 1968 when Maybelline sold to Plough Inc.,  and left the Williams family after 53 years.  Today Maybelline New York is owned by the French company L'Oreal.


Read all about it in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.