Women have added color to their lips for
at least five millennia. The earliest
evidence of a colored paste or lipstick
comes from Mesopotamia in around
3000 B.C.E. There , it was made of
crushed semi precious jewels and then
put on to the eyelids as well as the lips.
Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt ( 69 - 30 B. C
.
E) used crushed carmine beetles in a
base made of ants as lipstick. Some
formulations would have resulted in
serious illness or even death, such as the
Ancient Egyptian concoction from 1400
B.C.E which used a red dye extracted
from seawood , mixed with iodine and
toxic bromine compounds.
In 1915 , Maurice levy invented the
sliding tube that we know as lipstick.
Levy's tubes were just 2 inches 5 cm
long. The sliding tube worked by a set of
slide levers in the casing. In subsequent
development, levy added a slide and twist
mechanism , creating the lipstick tube as
we know it today.
Lipstick, in its new and convenient
form, caught the imagination of women
in America and Europe from the early part
of the twentieth century. Movie Stars and
other performers made it a relatively
inexpensive luxury in an otherwise tough
and unglamorous world of economic
hardship and wartime.
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