National Lipstick Day

Lipstick and lip gloss and lip balm, oh, my!

Hello Gorgeous!

It’s National Lipstick Day, a hallowed celebration of all things related to lip tints, and a day that I take very seriously. But first, a brief bit of lipstick history.

Lipstick as a symbol of solidarity, empowerment, and rebellion

While the use of tinted lip waxes or oils (which included crushed gemstones!) dates back to ancient Sumeria, lip products only became popular in the Western world in the 1500s. But let’s skip forward a few hundred years to WWII.

In the midcentury, men were at war, and women headed out of the home as a workforce for the first time. Many women worked in munitions factories and shipyards creating critical war supplies. A select few joined the war movement and their uniforms had distinctive red piping and chevrons. Also notable, women’s uniforms were almost universally paired with skirts and matching stockings.

In 1941, one of the grande dames of the beauty industry, Elizabeth Arden was asked to create a shade of red lipstick to match the trim on w…