Discover the stories, styles, and cultural shifts behind makeup across eras and cultures.
Makeup is a mirror of the world.
Different eras.
Same desire
to feel beautiful.
A hundred thousand years of evidence, placed where it was found. Drag the years, or pick an era.
Arrow keys move between pins, Enter selects one, Escape hides its card.
304 events between c. 100,000 BCE and 2026. Select a pin to read it.
In 2023 and 2024 short-video platforms carried beauty tutorials and hauls to children, and “Sephora kids” became the name for tweens buying skincare made for older skin; dermatologists warned of rashes, and a California bill to stop sales of some anti-ageing products to under-13s failed in May 2024.
Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2055, adopted on 25 September 2023, restricted synthetic polymer microparticles added to products: loose glitter and microbeads went first, rinse-off cosmetics have until 2027, other leave-on products until 2029, and makeup, lip and nail products until October 2035.
The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act, enacted on 29 December 2022, made cosmetics companies register their facilities, list their products and report serious adverse events, and gave the FDA recall powers; the rules it ordered on manufacturing, fragrance allergens and asbestos in talc were still unfinished in the autumn of 2026.
On 1 May 2021 China stopped requiring animal tests for imported general cosmetics that came with a government-issued manufacturing certificate and a safety assessment: a waiver with conditions, exceptions and a paperwork problem that decided how far it reached.
When masks covered the lower face in 2020, lipstick fell further than any other makeup while eye products held up; by the spring of 2021, as vaccination spread, American lipstick sales were recovering, led by formulas that would not rub off inside a mask.
Instagram launched in 2010; by December 2019 The New Yorker was describing “Instagram Face”, a much-copied look made by contour and highlight, photo filters, editing apps and injections — the latest turn in a long history of shading a face for the camera.
Adornment with a job to do. The practices outlive the reasons given for them.
One mirror, every era of the face, and a song. Watch Vivien make up her way through history, with every page the song sings about following along beneath the film.
Watch the filmThe pot, the tube, the compact, the mirror. What people kept their face in, and what the container tells us that the cosmetic does not.
Who founded them, when, and what each one argued the face was for.
