ever-present fashion item
today.
Even though we can determine
that popularity of lipsticks
became truly worldwide during
1920s and 1930s, its history
reached much farther in the
past. First paint products that
were used to decorate lips of
fashionable male and female
users were created around 5
thousand in Ancient
Mesopotamia. There, females
used crushed gemstones to
decorate their faces, but similar
traditions soon reached Indus
Valley Civilization and Egypt.
While Indus Valley practiced
creation of paints that were
poisonous and in some cases
deadly, Egypt chemist worked
on much more useable
formulas that remained in use
all untill end of the Egyptian
empire. Modern historian
remembered the fact that
famous Cleopatra often weared
red lipstick that was made from
crushed red carmine beetles.
For more than thousand years
after the fall of Egypt,
European population almost
forgot about lipstick. They did
not practice it in any occasion,
and Christian Church
popularized belief that red
lipstick is the sign of the Satan
worshiping. With such bad
environment, lipsticks
managed to resurface only in
16th century on the court of
English Queen Elizabeth I. Her
fashion of stark white faces and
bright red lips popularized
lipstick across entire England,
but only for a small period of
time. After this fashion trend
passed, lipstick became
marginalized and left to be
used only by professional
actors and the lowest classes of
people (such as prostitutes).
Changes of fashion regarding
lipstick finally came at the end
of 19th century. By then
lipsticks finally started being
produced in commercial use,
packaged in metal tubes, and
finally receiving their famous
swivel-up mechanism in 1923.
This enabled lipstick to
become cheap, and easy to use,
which quickly brought it to the
booming film industry. With
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