Mom's lipstick: Girls about their first cosmetics

We recently recalled the childhood TV series (one, two) and realized that we miss so many things, including our first cosmetics. We asked 10 girls to tell about their pearlescent varnishes, Pupa sets, creams "Ballet" and "Tik-Tac" and other strange and not very things that were then used.

In my childhood, self-care meant a clean neck rather than some kind of manipulation with cosmetics. Mom used “Ballet” cream and Ruby Rose mascara, because there was simply nothing else, and there was no money for anything either. I remember how shocked mom was by demonstrating to her the correct use of body cream read from a newspaper: you put body on cream, go into the shower and actively wash it off with a washcloth. They scolded me for a long time, but they bought me a cream. We also had chamomile inhalations in our house: you cook a bag of pharmacy chamomile in a saucepan and sit over it for half an hour, covered with a towel, breathe. From 6 to 13 I was actively engaged in ballroom dancing: I often performed at New Year trees, participated in contests. Each performance implied curled hair and intensive makeup with mascara, false eyelashes, shadows, lipstick, rouge and bronzer. In a word, while my contemporaries secretly dragged mother's cosmetics, I had my own Chinese cosmetic bag-all-in-one vest, and my mother would paint me with pleasure under a big artist. In the mid-90s, fashionable European brands Rimmel, Nivea, Pupa began to appear - there was still no money for this, but there was interest in them. Therefore, a couple of times a week, we and our girlfriends made a round of regional shops and tents, and breathed for a long time in the shop windows, poking fingers into beautiful jars with lacquers, shades and lipsticks. Saleswomen for some reason did not even drive us, just silently wiped the shop windows after we left. From bright children's impressions: in my childhood, colored mascaras for my hair sunk into the soul, they were in fashion for some half a year, then disappeared. I still regret that I did not have one. The first perfume appeared in my class in the seventh, it was the perfumed Spice up your life deodorant with Spice Girls on the bottle. He smelled disgustingly sharp, but he was terribly fashionable. Relatives suffered a couple of months and gave me some adult toilet water. Still, while adult aunties painted nails with mother-of-pearl varnishes, we went crazy on the Kiki varnish palette, they were incredibly awful in quality: the nails turned yellow instantly, but then we were not interested in the quality of cosmetics.

Memories of my first makeup are scrappy and vague. I remember my mother's favorite perfume, J'adore in their very first incarnation, is an incredibly fashionable and cool thing by the standards of the mid-1990s. Squirted furtively, yes. I remember the incredible amount of papa's perfumes - from blue Davidoff to Armani in a matte bottle, they all stood on a mirrored shelf and glared very nicely, the game of glare always fascinated me endlessly, I will say more - this mirror shelf always seemed to me a sign of some kind it is unshakable nothing of well-being, satiety, luxury, which, of course, in fact was completely wrong. I remember the classic cream Nivea in a tin blue jar, they always smeared me every time I came back from the hill (there was an ice slide behind our house, we tested ourselves for strength in all possible ways) or from the forest (there was and is a secret forest a pet cemetery, in my childhood - an attraction more abruptly than any Disneyland, sorry). I remember that the monopoly on the mirror, again, the small stands (aka the shelves in the bathroom) belonged to the Italian phytobrand L'Erbolario, the packaging they did just cosmic beauty, by the way, what's with them now? I remember that I dreamed of a set of children's cosmetics for girls "Little Fairy" - a plastic envelope with spangles with shampoo, condom and scented soap inside, and when my grandparents handed it to me solemnly, fortunately there was no limit! I remember that it cost as much as 180 rubles! I remember how, before the discos, we bought girls or girls half or three ball glitters, covered them from head to toe and, in full confidence in their own irresistibility, spoke the language of my school youth to frame the guys. And after all, the quadrille is the same ... It was great to give a classmate a birthday lipstick or a shade of Ruby Rose! And for my birthday, my best friend brought a multi-stage Pupa set in the form of a big-bellied angel from Dubai. It was just pipets as cool! I remember and pour tears of emotion: where did this purity and naivety go? However, it would be strange if at the age of 15 I would be alarmed by the composition of “glitter 100%”. Those who have had a childhood in the 1990s are the happiest people, it was fun and cool! And a real adult - and therefore incredibly dramatic - a love affair with cosmetics started much later in the seventh grade, along with the first acne and the first Klerasil, with which I foolishly tried to get rid of them.

Decorative cosmetics in the mouth of my family was the decoration of the side benches. That is, Vasilisa from the eighth floor compensated for the lack of a brain, and Lena from the first - a phantom chest. Therefore, any contact of the face with something that was not soap was equal to the recognition of its own shortcomings. So I thought, until with a gift was a cousin from Norway - with the latest, not yet come down to our yard, technology: two-sided ink Bourjois. One brush is white, the other is black. Having alternately processed one eye, I went to get a needle - to order stuck eyelashes. Moreover, the upper with upper, lower with lower and upper with lower ones stuck together; only one eye, untouched by the “revolution,” could open. When his makeup was finished, fingers pricked from bleeding and back ached from the need to bend over to the mirror. But I, sincerely pleased with the deliverance from cosmetic virginity, slandered to school: for the first time in my life with colored eyelashes - painted white over black.

Most of my youth, I passed with a bare face, absolutely not thinking about cosmetics, but sometimes the magazine "Worker" brought the makeup scheme "Lambada", or something else beautiful broke through, and I wanted to make up like the last time. It was the beginning of the 90s, we watched Beverly Hills 90210 and “Helen and the guys,” wrapped bangs on a round brush and tried to portray what they saw on the show. All friends at that moment were divided into two camps: supporters of matte brown lipstick and light mother-of-pearl. I belonged to the latter. Pink, deprived of the lip contour, despised, so went the most radical way: black or brown (if you managed to get) contour pencil and white mother-of-pearl lipstick. I was quite sure that if I gently rub the inner edge of the contour line and paint it with mother-of-pearl, I would see charming lips at the exit. It is difficult to say how I could see them in the resulting violent corpse, but self-hypnosis acted. Once I was presented with an incredible thing by my standards - a palette with a dozen different lipsticks and a pair of brushes. The colors could be mixed or used in pure form, for example, orange, which I took advantage of as soon as the white mother-of-pearl ended. On the street I met my father, I did not immediately recognize. Then he wondered and asked if I knew what was on my face. It turned out (suddenly) that colors with electric light and daylight look very different. Orange neon made the skin gray and porous, self-hypnosis refused to work. I threw the palette, and since then my lips have hardly ever painted my lips: there is simply no habit.

I began my first acquaintance with cosmetics with lip gloss. I remember buying them in large quantities, I really liked that everyone had different tastes, they also cost some pennies, so they were lost and purchased almost every day. The stamps were some kind of budget and nameless, from the point of view of functionality, the brilliance was absolutely failed and sticky (but tasty!). The very first brand glitter was Dior hellish pink color, with sparkles. I still remember how, after using it twice, it spread in my bag, leaving my gorgeous pink color on the geometry textbook from the library. I also remember that I constantly took red nail polish from my grandmother, Ruby Rose, in my opinion (it still seems that nails are so weak from him). And then Orly appeared, and my friends and I bought them in small versions so that we could change. During her school years she didn’t know how to use shadows and eyeliner, she preferred pencils to them, and if she needed some serious coloring, she ran to her friend who had a huge palette of very different shades, a real watercolor. I also remember how disappointed I was when I bought the first branded mascaras of Lancôme and Dior: compared with Maybelline with a green cap, they obviously lost, although I rarely use ink and even this expert is not at all. But until now, I sometimes buy this Maybelline, this is the only thing left from that time. It is a pity that in our childhood there was no Benefit brand: if I had any niece or sister, I would give without thinking.

Well, face lotion in a pink bottle from a non-existent store “Household goods” on Rossolimo Street, I haven’t remembered you for a long time. He was called so: “Lotion for the face” - and I didn’t need it at all at 11 years old, but you know, I really wanted to. I poured it on multi-colored cotton balls (why aren’t they visible anywhere else?) And selflessly smeared my face. Then he painted it with watercolor. And hair too. Watercolor, green paint and markers. And then Dior mascara appeared, does anyone remember? My mother gave me, I was incredibly happy. One was Dior (blue!), And the rest were some kind of Chinese fakes. All this is perfectly combined with L'Oreal blue lip gloss. I applied it in a thick layer so that it was completely blue, and not just transparent. I still remember his sweet smell and taste. But before the ink, in the period of watercolors and markers, life smelled of Impulse deodorant and was painted in bright colors of the bottles. "What is your" Impulse "?" - "Purple. And you?" - "I have an orange." They all smelled equally disgusting. There were also nail polishes from the pedestrian crossing on Arbat: acidic, with sparkles, there was also a very beautiful blue Maybelline, similar to the starry sky (although it was from the hardware store of the military hostel of the Frunze Academy).

When I first started to think about how I looked - it was not my own growing up or self-awareness as a girl, but rather that my classmates started wearing bras and dyeing eyelashes - there was no money, of course, and to ask my mother something like that seemed wildest too. I found some of her old cosmetic bag, where she probably put the cosmetics, which was a pity to throw. It was a pity to throw out all the cosmetics at that time, at least for my mother. It was dark brown lipstick with small sparkles, indistinct color of the shadow, about which you can not say, they are gray or purple. There were also pristine rounded Lancôme powders with a rose. I remember trying to depict something on the face with all this, but it was a disastrous idea: the cosmetics itself did not suit me, and I did not know how to use it. Then came the fleeting gifts from my mother's girlfriends from the world of women's magazines: Mom worked as a photographer. Silver shadows and perfumes of Jeans Tru Trussardi, for some unknown reason, stayed with me for many years. I myself began to buy cosmetics only a couple of years ago, after I became the happy owner of the entire first Dolce & Gabbana cosmetics collection, when I was working on an advertising shoot with Scarlett Johansson. Only at that moment it finally dawned on me that red lipstick was coming to me, that blush was a good friend on a winter morning and that mascara should not be older than six months. It's embarrassing to admit it, of course.

When I hear the words “my first cosmetics”, I immediately remember the advertisement for “Little Fairy”, which was played on TV in my childhood. It seems that this fairy was not without its cost, but the very first cosmetics I can remember at all is the Turkish cosmetic set, which my grandmother purchased from her Polish neighbors who brought goods for sale, and Tik-Tak children's cream in an aluminum tube . I still remember its smell, and it is strongly associated with childhood, because up to 15 years this cream was for me a universal remedy: for face and hands. I didn’t need anything for my body at this age. The cosmetic set, of course, was not bought for me, but I was his biggest fan. When nobody was at home, she took out of the box, removed the transparent plastic cover and admired, without even trying to be beautiful. I still have this habit: I really like to go to the cosmetics stores, but I rarely buy something, and if I make a purchase, I use it a couple of times. In the dream set, sunk into my memory, there was an impressive palette of shadows, three shades of blush, lip gloss and brushes for applying all this. It’s hard to say if anyone used them at all: perhaps they were kept for a special occasion. Other artifacts of my childhood are my grandmother’s purple lipstick, her pearly nail polishes, a beautiful cologne in a beautiful bottle, powder in a cardboard box — a whole world to explore. I have not yet created my own. I have one ink - and that's it.

I managed to go to school under the Soviet regime, and my first cream was Ballet hand cream from the Moscow factory Svoboda, there was also Cream Kare, it seems, Leningrad factory Northern Lights, and Mink cream, which as far as I understand, it was produced in cooperation with the Soviet fur industry. It seems that all this, even the Mink cream, is still being produced - God knows who owns the trademarks, but they exist. As for the "care products", as they are called now, for the face, these were lotions and creams that were made in a usual Soviet pharmacy by prescription of a cosmetologist and they dealt well with all sorts of teenage problems. The first makeup was Italian Pupa - such red tubes with lipstick and cases with palettes. Pupa's palette seemed such a treasure that some of the shadows and blush in my body dried out intact. And the shadows from the first Gum salon, Estée Lauder, which worked as a regime object, with passes, are still kept somewhere at home by my parents - like a relic. I remember my first perfumes very well, Miss Dior - the husband gave them to our neighbor, and she sold them to my mother, because she did not like them. Mom, they also somehow did not really liked, and she gave them to me, and I happily watered Miss Dior perfume, going to school, and it was just perfume. I grew up in the city of Tolyatti, where the city-forming production was, of course, the VAZ - and there, in the early 90s, the Office of Workers Supply and its shops appeared, where, again, they sold all kinds of haberdashery on special stamps, - and including all imported perfume classics: Climat, Magie Noire, J'ai Ose, etc. Now all this in the form of vintage perfumes 20-25 years old is, by the way, tens of thousands - more than any niche and designer fragrances.

While classmates were discussing acne and “Propeller” makeup between lessons, and the boys talked only about the boobs of the same classmates, I definitely had nothing to do. I had neither one nor the other. But there was a bunch of girlfriends, everyday tormented by the question of masking the traces of rapid puberty. The devil himself does not know what is going on in the head of a 14-year-old schoolgirl who violently wants to look better (and older) than she is. Then for the first time I was shot for some teen magazine. There was such a massive make-up that my mother did not recognize me, laughed and in addition called the "eastern princess", which I did not like at all. But so terribly wanted to be like everyone else. But I didn’t know how to make up (which is already there - and now I don’t know how). Therefore, the course was chosen to "naturel." 100% adolescent crash - PUPA. I think the company was seriously enriched in that period only at my expense. It is necessary to give credit to the designers of the brand: product design attracted me more than the content. I frantically bought pink blush and peach lip gloss often because of the tubes. There were some butterflies, cats, bears, dolls and even a geisha. The ultimate dream was a big brand sets. I remember now: a red-silver whale in the shape of a heart with several levels of palettes - and now I’m almost the elite of high school, and the high school students break loose with me during the big break. In theory, all this riot of PUPA sparkles should have turned me into a kind of young nymph glowing from the inside and browned outside with a slight gloss on the lips.