Despite their financial importance, the beauty industry
in general and the cosmetic industry in particular remain
two of the most understudied subsectors of the American economy.
In terms of cosmetics, for example, each year, women in the
United States spend over $10 billion on makeup and associated
items.
The size of the industry notwithstanding, cosmetics has been
the subject of little or no systematic scholarly study. What
we do know about this $10 billion subsector of the economy
comes from anecdotes, advertisements, promotions, and the “fugitive” literature
of trade publications. Inevitably, this information is ad
hoc in nature — dealing with a particular beauty trend
at a specific point in time. Thus, we know very little about
how cosmetic fashions fit into a broader societal context
and how such fashions wax and wane with the tides of social
change.
In an effort to provide some insight regarding the interface
between the cosmetics industry and the larger society, the
present analysis focuses on the lifecycle of a once essential
part of a woman’s makeup portfolio — the decorative
compact. Assuming a wide variety of elaborate shapes, ranging
from miniature baby carriages to Bowie knives, compacts first
arrived on the fashion scene in the early 1900s, reached
a crescendo of creativity in the 20s and 30s, and quietly
passed out of day-to-day existence by the mid-1950s.
Now relegated to display cases in antique shops or the dresser
drawer of our grandmothers, decorative compacts reflect a
storied era between the wars when personal items were really
made of metal and had the look of craft about them. Indeed,
for women of the first half of the twentieth century, the
style of a compact was just as important as the face powder
and lipstick that it housed.
At one time, virtually every woman in America had at least
one compact and wanted it to be what Harper’s Bazaar July 1934 edition called, “The kind of compact you
can pull out and make great show of at the dinner table.” What
happened to the item the 1928 Sears and Roebuck catalog referred
to as the “Modern Essential”? How did an item
so integral to the daily personal life of women pass from
favor? In essence, a confluence of social, psychological,
and technical trends led to a sea change in (A) how society
views beauty, (B) the role of women in a post-industrial
economy and, (C) how plastic packaging influenced consumption.
Studying the emergence, evolution, and demise of the decorative
compact provides an opportunity to assess how the broad sweep
of social change impacts even the most mundane aspects of
daily life.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE DECORATIVE COMPACT: 1900-1920
As Roseann Ettinger reminds us in Compacts and Smoking
Accessories,
compacts were born in the Edwardian era, a time when makeup
was still controversial, so powder cases were disguised as
a component of more socially acceptable accessories, such
as walking sticks, hatpins, or necklaces. Beginning in 1896,
according to R. Gerson in Vintage & Vogue Ladies’ Compacts,
mesh handbag manufacturer Whiting & Davis Company of
Plainville, Massachusetts, created a case-like lid for its
bags that featured compartments for powder, rouge, or combs.
These early carrying methods befit the times, states Claire
Wilcox in Bags, as “privacy and secrecy became paramount — there
was no more showing of female accessories.” Despite
the popularity of disguised makeup containers, the compact
as a freestanding entity was slow to emerge.
Andrea DiNoto states in Art Plastic: Designed for
Living that as “women began
to enter the work force in greater numbers it became necessary
to transform vanity items into
portable forms.” Manufacturers were quick to respond
to this demand via department stores soliciting urban dwellers
and mail-order catalogs servicing rural areas. In 1908, for
example, Sears, Roebuck & Co advertised a hinged, silver-plated
case that sold for nineteen cents, described as “small
enough to carry in the pocketbook.” This small and
round housing for face powder, puff, and mirror became known
as a compact.
METAL AS MAINSTAY
From its first formal appearance in 1908, until its unceremonious
demise in the mid-1950s, the decorative compact was a veritable
shape shifter. For the majority of the compact’s run
as a “must-have” fashion accessory, metal was
used because it was readily available, cheap to produce,
and could be brushed, enameled, engraved, and painted. Ettinger
notes that sterling silver was extremely popular, as was
brass, aluminum, gunmetal, nickel, and gilt.
Early metal models by industry leaders such as Evans and
Elgin American featured ringed finger-chains or longer tango
chains complete with lipstick holders; these appendages made
the compact easy to carry and called for its design to be
carefully considered, as the item was not tucked away in
a handbag but openly exhibited. According to Gerson, the
compacts made at the close of World War I featured shapes,
patterns, and motifs that reflect the geometric style of
what would become known as the Art Deco movement and reference
its various influences. Orientalism, for example, manifested
itself in the form of etched bamboo leaves, striking red
and black enamel, as well as hand-painted pagodas.
Durable metal compacts met the needs of the image-focused,
physically mobile, post-World War I woman — whether
she was dancing the Charleston, punching a time clock, or
traveling in a motorcar.
FEMININITY REDEFINED
Makeup was mainstream by the close of World War I. Film
stars such as Theda Bara, with the help of industry innovator
Helena
Rubinstein, brought heavily lined eyes, mascara-laden lashes,
and reddened lips from the stage to the American silver
screen and in doing so, Maggie Angeloglou explains in A
History
of Make-Up, “gave cinema audiences in Britain and America
a new view of femininity.” The avid interest in cosmetics
was furthered by increased competition among women for potential
husbands, as the war had eliminated a significant portion
of eligible men. As Kate De Castelbajac notes in The
Face of the Century, the lack of bachelors in post-World War I
America “created an emphasis on beauty that was sexually,
rather than socially codified.”
These social trends, coupled with the now-mobile working
woman’s grooming needs and her expendable income, added
up to big business for the blossoming cosmetic industry.
According to historian Kathy Peiss, between 1909 and 1929
the number of cosmetic and perfume manufacturers doubled,
with the factory value of their goods growing tenfold from
$14 million to $141 million. Out of this boom, the compact
emerged as more than a trinket or grooming tool; it had become
a social necessity, a conversation-starting compass needed
to navigate the increasingly choppy waters of male-female
courtship. As Kathy Lee Peiss writes in Hope in a Jar, “The
young flapper adopted the compact as…a prop in a
public performance.”
THE EVOLUTION: 1920-1940
Twenty years after the Sears catalog first introduced a
powder carry case, its 1928 edition devoted two pages to
the accessory
they termed the “Modern Essential.” The compact
was just that — essential. How else could American
women carry the 4,000 tons of face powder they were consuming
yearly?
COMPACTS AS CULTURAL INDICATORS
The compacts of the 1920s merged practicality and frivolity.
Truly reflections of their time, these compacts were heavily
influenced by social and cultural trends. The unearthing
of King Tut’s tomb in 1922, according to Lynell Schwartz
in Vintage Compacts & Beauty Accessories, spawned a range
of sphinx-, pyramid-, and obelisk-shaped compacts inscribed
with hieroglyphics and glittering with faux gold. The rage
for automobiling called for its own kind of cosmetic containers
with compacts being “incorporated in the visor, steering
wheel, and on the gear-shift handle for easy access,” Gerson
states. The mock naiveté of Gertrude Stein’s
Lost Generation is summed up in the stuffed teddy bear
compacts produced by Schuco. These childhood-inspired accessories
featured a detachable head that housed lipstick and a torso
that opened to reveal powder.
In 1926, Elijah L. Johnson patented his cosmetic holder
(#1,607,985), Gerson tells us, “in the form of a bracelet which will
be very convenient for use and will in no manner interfere
with a person’s activity.” Bracelets, along with
shoe buckles and rings, allowed the 1920s woman to participate
in two of her favorite pastimes simultaneously — dancing
and applying makeup. Eastman Kodak Trade Circular’s
October 1928 issue featured a Vanity Kodak Ensemble with
a large mirror, camera, lipstick tube, and a powder and
rouge compact made by popular cosmetic manufacturer Richard
Hudnut.
As the Jazz Age came to a close and the Great Depression
loomed, the compact had become an integral part of American
popular culture.
HOLLYWOOD GLAMOUR TAKES CENTER STAGE
By the early 1930s, the compact’s position of importance
subjected its design to the influence of America’s
emerging aesthetic, Wilcox observes, “an interpretation
of Art Deco that excluded the romantic figuration of European
Art Deco…leaving only the abstract, uncluttered, and
aerodynamic.” To briefly escape their economic woes,
Americans flocked to the movies. Hollywood starlets served
as dictators of fashion, rather than the dance-hall girls
of the previous decade, and, according to Charles Goodrum
and Helen Dalrymple in Advertising in America: The
First 200 Years, “very quickly, the advertisers found that
it was easier to follow the images of the most successful
movie stars than to try to show the customers how they should
look.” In an era when glamour reigned, a woman used
her compact as both a testament to her sophistication and
a personal calling card. Sleek, small compacts soon made
their clunky older sisters appear clumsy and cumbersome.
As the cases became smaller with each passing year, Schwartz
notes,they also became more and more intricate in design.
"MULTIPURPOSE
AS A MARKETING CONCEPT"
While the compact was susceptible to overall fashion trends
that influenced its patterns, motifs, and size, its ability
to turn a profit kept manufacturers searching for inventive
incarnations to appeal to an increasingly fickle market.
Gimmicks included miniature windshield wipers to clean
the interior mirror and compact/flashlight combinations
such
as Zell’s “First Nighter.”
It was the concept of a truly multipurpose compact, however,
that continually appealed to women throughout the accessory’s
more decorative phases and accounted for many of its most
enduring forms. Ettinger notes, “Working watches were
set right into the tops of square compacts while round compacts
were made to resemble pocket watches,” and Linda
Balcerak tells us that a cigarette manufacturer, offered
smokers a
combination compact/cigarette case that included makeup
and a lighter. The cigarette case and the compact were
logical
cohorts. By the 1930s, applying makeup and cigarette
smoking were socially acceptable and chic. Both items
spoke to
the establishment of women as a viable consumer market
and independent
decisions makers.
According to Schwartz, the 1930s saw the compact become
integrated with women’s fashion trends, and, by the summer of
1933, compacts were manufactured to match ensembles, in the
hopes of encouraging additional purchases. Similarly, floral
designs on compacts were common. As Valerie Mendes points
out in 20th Century Fashion, “floral prints were
especially popular and were fashionable throughout the
decade.”
POWDER CASES GET PERSONAL
In the span of two decades, the compact had assumed the
shape of everything from baseballs and badminton racquets
to playing
cards and powder kegs. In doing so, the decorative compact
evolved from a practical package for face powder to a
personalized fashion accessory. Compacts took the form,
Ettinger tells
us, of “praying hands, guitars, pianos, books, fans,
suitcases, hats, hearts, hand mirrors, cameras, horseshoes,
crowns and animals.” One popular compact resembled
a telephone dial and was engraved with a woman’s telephone
number — just in case it slipped her mind.
As the 1930s wore on, women could purchase individualized
compacts from specialty manufacturers. One mention in
the “Shopping
Bazaar” section of the November 1939 edition of Harper’s
Bazaar offers women the name and address of a shop. The ad
said, “just send a photograph of your pet dog or cat…your
house…your front door with your address” and “an
excellent artists will reproduce whatever you choose on the
lid” for a “very personal compact” that “will
undoubtedly cause talk.”
Compacts could be commemorative; the world’s fairs
in Chicago in 1933 and New York in 1939 sold souvenir compacts.
Schwartz states that he latter featured compacts made by
industry leaders such as Elgin American and Zell, who created
a representation of the Fair’s Administration Building.
Those visiting Paris could pick up a commemorative compact
for personal use or as gifts for friends at home. Every
tourist destination from Texas to Thailand sold souvenir
compacts
during the 1930s and 1940s.
THE DEMISE: 1940-1955
By the early 1950, the decorative compact had turned
from an essential fashion accessory into cosmetic packaging
that was designed to be discarded. The growth of the
plastics
industry is, to a large degree, at the heart of the shift.
Paradoxically, plastic is also the reason the compact
achieved so many incarnations during the 1940s. Wartime
rationing
calling for plastic to replace metal and glass as packaging
materials and production of plastic skyrocketed. Cosmetic
companies found it necessary to change to plastic and
cardboard packaging because of such restrictions. Between
1940 and
1945 alone, Jeffrey Meikle points out in American
Plastic: A Cultural History, annual production of synthetic materials
in the US tripled. With plastic emerging as the material
of choice for decorative compacts in the early- to mid-
1940s,
the landscape of cosmetic packaging changed radically — and
permanently.
PROBLEMS WITH EARLY PLASTICS
Interestingly, many of the first compacts were made of
plastics. Celluloid, for example, could be carved, created
in various
colors, and set with faux gems. Lightweight and versatile,
celluloid became a material of choice for the early compact,
and its cousin, the cylinder-shaped vanity, which featured
a rope carrying cord and decorative tassel.
Making celluloid, however, was a multi-step process including
various phases of submersion and drying. “Strips thick
enough to make compacts had to stay in the drying chamber
for about six months,” Schwartz explains. Once
the parts of the compact were assembled using various
chemicals,
it had to be decorated. As with horn, ivory, and wood,
it was necessary to shape celluloid by hand. While the
material
was cheap to produce and labor was not particularly expensive,
celluloid compacts were impossible to mass produce, relegating
them to an upscale market. When the masses demanded compacts,
metal was used to fit the bill.
PLASTIC MEETS POPULAR CULTURE
Beginning in the late 1920s, DiNoto observes, innovations
in plastic material such as acrylic, polystyrene, vinyl
and cellulose acetate made plastic relatively easy to
produce economically, especially in light of the new
molding techniques
imported from Germany between the wars. From 1930-1950,
a
flood of new materials hit the market. An early plastics
directory published in 1929 listed eighty-four trade
names. A similar list that appears to have been edited
was published
in 1939, Meikle states, and included nearly 250 trade
names.
Injection molding of these new materials soon replaced
the compression molding — and its associated plastics — of
the past. According to Meikle, compression molding calls
for a mold to be heated and cooled with each object produced;
injection molding, however, uses a hot cylinder and a
cold mold, enabling mechanized mass production.
Wartime made great use of these new materials and molding
methods. Acrylic, for example, was used for bomber noses,
and Plexiglas was used for their windshields. At home,
Americans were becoming exposed to the now mass-produced
plastics,
which were touted as modern marvels. Harper’s Bazaar
November 1945 edition writes, “All the old and beautifully
built metal compacts are to be had once again, plus new ones
in the hardy, handsome plastics developed by war.” Plastics’ importance
in the war effort was a selling point for manufacturers.
Industry leader Volupté, for example, ran advertisements
in 1942 for plastic compacts that read, “And it’s
thrilling to know that the Volupté precision tools
which fashioned this, are busily working on intricate parts
for defense.” The 1940s not only saw consumers warming
up to the trend of plastic, but completely buying into the
advertiser-crafted hype that these materials were innovative
and durable — virtual symbols of American ingenuity
and independence.
How this new wave of materials, production methods, and
public acceptance manifested itself into decorative compacts
is
visually apparent in the objects themselves. Compacts
from the 1920s and 1930s were, for the most part, made
of metal.
The few that have plastic use it as a design element
upon a metal base. According to Juliette Edwards in Powder
Compacts,
any parts, such as the powder dispenser or hinges, needed
to be metal because early plastics were too brittle to
take the repetitive stress of opening and closing.
By the 1940s, the compact received a total makeover once
plastic could be easily molded and quickly produced in
an array of colors, designs, and patterns. The availability
of new materials resulted in a wave of new products into
the market. While many of the designs from the previous
decades
were still popular, moldable plastics made achieving
the shapes much easier and less time consuming. Plastic
was
also able to duplicate the look of more expensive, hand-worked
techniques such as enameling.
METAL AND PLASTIC MERGE
During the 1940s, metal and plastic compacts peacefully
co-existed; many examples integrated both materials into
their design.
In a gift guide from Harper’s Bazaar November 1947
edition, for example, editors offered up a $1,100 gold
compact on the very same page as a plastic one for $7.50.
It must be noted that a compact made of plastic did not
relegate the object to a less desirable position in the
eyes of the
consumer, as the public did not yet associate the material
with being disposable. Roger and Gallet’s acrylic compact
of 1946 featured a separately molded sunburst medallion that
was hand-painted and delicately attached to the base with
tiny nails. The incredibly popular hand-mirror shaped Trio-ette
compact made by the House of Platé was made of molded
Tenite and featured a hand-painted rose cameo. It offered
a lipstick hidden in the mirror’s handle and powder
and rouge in the body of the mirror. The combination sold
for $5.50 in the mid- 1940s — the same price point
as a traditional metal compact. It was only as the public
became familiar with how cheaply plastic could be produced
that the idea of disposability took shape in the popular
mindset.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
By the early 1950s, advertisements for obviously disposable
compacts began to dominate the pages of women’s magazines.
Ads for compact manufacturers such as Rex and Wadsworth were
replaced with ads for cosmetic manufacturers such as Revlon
and Helena Rubinstein. In the span of a decade, compacts
that were once inscribed with a woman’s name were now
emblazoned with a manufacturer’s moniker or logo, or — for
generic adaptability — a faux monogram that was
too abstract to be aptly identified.
The very plastics that were lauded as long lasting during
the 1940s were considered disposable by the mid-1950s.
DiNoto tells us that plastic packaging for cosmetics
was unusual
until the early fifties but soon became the norm. Indeed,
by the next decade, Meikle states, plastic packaging
designed to be disposable accounted for 20 percent of
the total
plastic production in the United States. “Use and Lose” had
become the motto of the American consumer.
ADDITIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCES
The demise of the decorative compact cannot be attributed
solely to the growth of plastic packaging. More likely,
it is the synergy between the boom in the plastics industry
and the changes in an increasingly sophisticated cosmetics
market that silently sealed the fate of what is now regarded
as a quaint beauty accessory. For the first time in history,
cosmetics were being mass-produced and purchased by a
wider range of women than ever before. By 1948, Peiss
notes,
80
to 90 percent of American women wore lipstick, two out
of three wore blush, and a quarter wore eye makeup.
EMERGENCE OF MAKEUP TRENDS
The decline in popularity of face powder has much to
do with the disappearance of the decorative compact.
Powder
was originally
used to remove coloration from the skin. In his short
story “The
Adjuster,” F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Luella Hemple: “Her
skin was radiant and there was no need of putting anything
on it at all, but in deference to an antiquated fashion — this
was the year 1920 — she powdered out its high roses
and drawn on it a new mouth.”
As the middle class became more affluent, traveled more
to exotic places, and played more in the sun, the visual
aesthetic
changed. The sun-kissed tans of jet-setting Americans
and California beach babes made the porcelain-white skin
of
a previous generation seem outdated. Dewy, glowing skin
was
a sign of health and vigor — attributes the American
woman now tried to project.
ADVANCES IN THE MARKET
By the 1950s, cosmetic options available to the American
consumer seemed limitless. The three or four shades of
loose powder from which the flapper had to choose were
a far cry
from the multiplicity of makeup options on the market
by mid-century. In the first two years of the 1950s,
De Castelbajac
states, cosmetic retail sales jumped from an impressive
$400 million to over a billion dollars.
Face powder, once a solo player, had become merely a
member of the chorus. In the course of twenty years,
women went
from needing a simple container for their lipstick and
powder to needing a makeup bag to hold mascara, eyeliner,
lip liner,
and eye shadow.
CHANGES IN WOMEN'S RELATIONSHIP TO MAKEUP
As the post-war era evolved, women’s psychological
approach to makeup changed. The flurry of excitement a woman
could create by whipping out her compact in 1924 didn’t
hold the same intrigue in 1954. In fact, women were less
and less interested in displaying their use of cosmetics.
The newly liberated flapper flaunted her compact with pride,
but Park Avenue advertising firms convinced the housewife
of the 1950s that an image of indelibility — a permanent
prettiness — was the modern way and required a more
private application ritual. Specifically, beauty advertisement
jargon began to emphasize indelibility and the image of permanence
with phrases such as “long lasting” and “kiss-proof.” The
modern woman would seem old-fashioned to have to reapply
in public. Finally, according to Angeloglou, the natural, “no-makeup” trend
of the late 1950s and 1960s allowed a generation to become
even less familiar with applying face powder.
CONCLUSION
The multibillion-dollar cosmetics industry provides a
useful vehicle for understanding how broad social trends
impact
everyday life. Clearly, the vagaries of the beauty industry
are at least partly determined by the socioeconomic and
cultural shifts taking place in the larger society. The
decorative
compact, once a “never leave home without,” fell
victim to changes in the social definition of beauty,
modifications in the self-image of women, and the onslaught
of disposable
plastic packaging.
By understanding the societal factors behind the rise
and fall of such everyday implements as the decorative
compact,
we come to better grips with our understanding of social
change. Too often, such broad concepts remain far up
the ladder of abstraction and are reserved for academic
discourse.
But social change, for all its macro characteristics,
affects the daily life of people in the real world. And
the more
we understand that daily life, the more we are able to
assess the impact of broader societal trends on individual
behavior.
May 2006
From guest contributor Deirdre Clemente
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