Mascaramentals: Part Two

Mascara is historically documented as a prized cosmetic used in ancient times.  The early Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians were very fond of painting their eyes, and frequently used a substance called kohl to darken their lashes, eyebrows, and eyelids.  In the late 1880’s through 1905, two chemists in different countries (Eugene Rimmel and T. L. Williams) experimented with coal dust blended with petroleum jelly and soap ingredients to produce a marketable cosmetic made exclusively for the eyelashes.  In 1915 Williams founded Maybelline, a cake mascara company named after his sister, Maybel, who inspired him with the idea for the product. 

In the early 1960’s Maybelline introduced Ultra Lash Mascara, the world’s first automatic brush-in-a-tube mascara, which revolutionized the way mascara is applied.  In 1971 Maybelline released Great Lash Mascara, a water-based formula that was much smoother in application than its original soap based formula.  It remains as one of the company’s top selling mascara products.

Today, it’s not hard to miss the mascara brand wars being played out on TV commercials and in beauty magazines.  Beautiful models with mega lashes fanned out in cartoon-like fashion are portrayed as if their mascara product is the only one that delivers mega-lash results.  In reality this is nothing more than hyper commercialism at its worst, with a lot of help from false eyelashes and photo retouching, to boost your senses into thinking you can achieve the same results.  Some brands even tout their mascara brushes as uniquely designed to deliver extraordinary mascara results. 

The truth is, you can achieve beautiful looking lashes with any brand of mascara, even old fashioned dry cake mascara, which is still my favorite product to use.  The basics for lovely looking lashes is in the preparation, technique, and the right tools for application.   Stay tuned for part 3 where I will share some of my professional application tips that I use to achieve beautiful results with any lash type.