History of Lipstick: Elizabeth Arden Red
In the history of lipstick, there is a legend that cosmetics entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden handed out red lipsticks to marching suffragettes in 1912. The story is used to show that Arden was a passionate women’s rights advocate and also drives the idea of red lipstick being adopted as a symbol of female protest.
But the cold hard truth is that there is no evidence that this legend is true.
The first thing that concerned me was that the story is told without any reference to, well anything: not a contemporary newspaper article, a company record or even a quote from Arden herself.
The second point is that most of the places that referenced this legend include the detail that the rally, and here they are referring to the very real march for suffrage through New York City in 1912, was led by feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins. Which would be fine if Stanton hadn’t died in 1902 at the age of 86: a full ten years earlier.
The evidence for the claim really bothered me. There are tons of newspaper articles before and after the march and they go into great detail. After all, this was the biggest march for suffrage that New York had ever seen.
The President of the Women’s Political Union, a Mrs Stanton Blatch (and this may be where some people have gotten confused with Cady Stanton), supervised the march with an army of workers who had toiled tirelessly for months to arrange everything to the smallest detail. And these plans were discussed frequently in the days and months leading up to May 4, 1912.
The reporters at the New York Times seem to be rather enamoured with the idea of “suffragette hats” a sort of bonnet that cost around 30c and were made by the Women’s Political Union especially to be worn during the march. The hats were white straw and could be trimmed with different coloured bands.
Detail was everything.
It was planned that the horseback riders were to be in black. The Women’s Political Union representatives would wear white suits and carry their banners of purple, green and white. Carriages, carrying participants too elderly to tackle the route, were to be decorated in buttercup yellow. The horses pulling these carriages were to wear yellow plumes on their heads, their coachmen dressed in black and yellow would pull on the yellow reins to guide the horses along the prescribed route. College women would wear their college cap and gowns.
You can see this in the New York Tribune of April 13, which goes into detail about the planned outfit of Mabel Lee, who was reported to be leading the brigade of horsewomen who were heading the procession. Like the other riders, she was said to be planning to wear “a tight-fitting black broadcloth habit and a tri-cornered black hat, with the green, purple and white cockade of the WPU.
I don’t want to go too far off track here, but my point is that there was a great deal of interest in what the women were wearing by the press and a great deal of planning by the organisers. It wasn’t left to chance.
The day of the march came, and the weather was lovely. Reports varied but it was said that between 15,000 and 20,000 people marched and the watching crowds along the route may have totalled half a million people. There were a lot of people taking part and a lot of people watching.
And the day after the march and newspapers were full of these eye witness accounts.
It was said that the strict colour divisions planned by the organisers had not come to pass. That there were many who wore uniforms or their day clothes, especially those who had not been given leave by their employees to take the day off work so had come straight after. There was even one woman, named as Mrs Marie Stewart, dressed as Joan of Arc.
And whilst the reports may have varied on how successful the march was in terms of rallying people to their cause, there is one thing that all of them have in common. Absolutely no mention of lipstick, red or otherwise.
And this would have definitely been something to remark on because at the time lipstick wearing, other than a smear of rouge for a flush of colour, would have been considered something highly unusual.
I also find it also hard to believe that Elizabeth Arden would have had any lipstick to hand in 1912. At the time her salon, which was on Fifth Avenue, NYC, had been opened for only two years. She had begun to get a name for herself as a skin specialist, serving society women. And whilst cosmetic use had gained in popularity and acceptability in Europe, in particular, Paris and London, it was very much not a thing in New York. Arden herself had only just been experimenting privately with colour makeup to enhance the skin and was reported to be rather shocked when she went to Paris later that summer and had seen Parisian women with eyeshadow and mascara (not too shocked that she didn’t bring some back with her later that year to sell discretely to her bolder clientele).
So, the newspaper reports do not mention this supposed historic event and the advertisements that Arden put out in magazines do not give any indication that she was even considering a range of cosmetics let alone had any stock to give out on a whim.
And a whim it surely was as Arden had apparently given no previous indication that she had any interest in women’s suffrage (or interest in anyone other than herself: she was reportedly not a very nice person.) In fact, an account given of that day by the assistants in the salon and told to Arden’s biographer, Lewis Alfred Allan in the early 1970s shows how out of character it was that Arden would suddenly decide to leave the salon and join in the march. Allan concluded:
“This detour from her personal road to freedom was not bought about by any profound change in political convictions. The only compelling change was the times. In the brief two years since 1910, suffrage had become fashionable. It was not so much the cause that Elizabeth admired as those who espoused it. Such a prestigious social aegis could only lend distinction to anybody who walked in its shadow. Elizabeth might have looked like a reformer, but she was actually only making another grab at the hem of the hobbled skirt of fashion. This first foray into the political arena did not improve her social standing, but it did give her credentials. She was later able to repudiate anybody who questioned her right to take a partisan position on public affairs. She would merely announce, “I know what I’m talking about, dear. I’ve been taking an active part in politics ever since I joined the suffrage movement – when I was barely out of my teens.” [Alfred Allan Lewis. Miss Elizabeth Arden (1972) page 61]
Perhaps it was just a way of being on the right side of history, a way of inserting herself into the consciousness of the well to do. Or maybe it was just natural human curiosity. But I don’t believe that it was the beginnings of lipstick as a feminist tool or the legend of Elizabeth Arden as a champion of women’s rights.
In fact, the legend doesn’t seem to have been told at all before Pallingston’s 1999 book, Lipstick which includes the reference to Cady Stanton. Before being repeated in other history of makeup books with a variety of spins on the original story. Sometimes it was that Arden gave out enough lipsticks for all the women to paint their lips, sometimes Cady Stanton was there and sometimes she was just given as an example of a famous supporter of women’s rights. For such a simple story there is a lot of inconsistency surrounding it.
But the legend really gets a boost in 2012, when Elizabeth Arden Limited (the lady herself died in the late 60s) launched a new limited-edition red lipstick alongside a campaign called March On with the intention of raising money for the charity UN Women, which champions ongoing work to advance women’s issues worldwide. In the publicity much was made of the fact that the launch marked 100 years since Arden had revolutionised feminism with that totally altruistic gift of lipstick.
So, I think that is that the legend is merely some very clever marketing that Arden herself would have been proud of. And, as ever, if I am wrong and missed something please tell me because I would love this legend to be true. But I really can’t see that it is.
A huge thanks to the generous research talents of The Makeup Museum
https://www.makeupmuseum.org/
and Cosmetics and Skin
https://cosmeticsandskin.com/
do go visit their website’s and follow them on social media. You will not regret it!