Mascara-A Makeup Product

Spit black or mascara in the '20s.

Mascara is a makeup product so common in our beauty houses, not to be imagined to have another form but the current one: more or less cylindrical packaging and brush.
But what we are used to using every day. is called "automatic mascara" and is a "relatively" recent invention dating back to the 1960s .

But mascara was the great protagonist of the '20s make-up and at the time it was marketed in the formulation "cake" or in pods .

Here's how the mascara appeared in the 20s.

How was the cake mascara applied?

In each pack of cake mascara, in addition to the wafer there was an applicator with a brush with which to pick up the mascara, spread it on the lashes and then brush them . Needless to say, to achieve a good result we needed a certain manual skills and certainly more time than we use today. The cake mascara could be used indiscriminately for both eyelashes and eyebrows .

In the decades the cake design formula was greatly improved especially to eliminate the sodium stearate that would have caused intense burns if it had gone into the eyes.

At the time there were not all the shades of mascara current and when referring to mascara was commonly spoken of Spit Black

Why Spit black?

The mascara in pod had the defect of being relatively dry and mellow and therefore had to be moistened. If the most sophisticated moistened the applicator with a little water, most of the women spit directly on the mascara waffle! Or licked directly the brush, ensuring a beautiful (and very evident) black stripe on the tongue. Inevi say that it was not exactly the maximum hygiene!

Do not you believe it? Here is a masterful interpretation of Miss Silvani in "Fantozzi to the rescue"

Cake Mascara today

For those who were so fanatical of vintage makeup to want a cake mascara exactly as it appeared in the '20s you can find them from Besame Cosmetics of which I had already spoken in this beauty blog. But I recommend, do not spit in it!