The Chemistry of Beauty

In pursuit of beauty, women of all ages and from all walks of life have created a demand

for products in which to enhance what God gave them, to conceal what they wish He didn’t give

them, and create what they wanted God to give them. As such, the beauty industry was created

despite appeals for “natural” beauty and admonishments that ladies didn’t rouge or powder, nor

did they wear anything heavier than lavender or rose-water. The fact that the modern beauty

industry laid its foundations in the so-called “repressed” Victorian era tells otherwise.

The modern perfume industry came into being in Paris between the years 1889 and 1921,

with the introduction of synthetic fragrances. Prior to this development, perfumers relied heavily

upon natural scents, which could be difficult to obtain, such as with vanilla, ambergris, civet, or

benzoin; or to extract its essences, such as with freesia, lilac, violet, or orchid. From the natural

distillation of fragrances, the chemical developments of the 19th century culminated in a new

perfume industry, based around the combination of natural and synthetic fragrances.

The first synthetic fragrance was the essence of Mirbane introduced by Collas in about

1850. Soon after, came the creation of artificial oil of wintergreen and of bitter almonds in 1868;

the creation of coumarin, a chemical compound found naturally in lavender, clover, and tonka

beans, that was designed to replicate the scent of freshly mowed hay, by Sir W. H. Perkin that

same year; vanillin, which as the crystalline component, was first isolated from vanilla pods in

1858, but was obtained from the glycosides of pine tree sap in 1875, and temporarily caused an

economic depression in the natural vanilla industry; and of ionone, almost identical with the

natural irone, the odorous principle of violets, by Tiemann and P. Kruger in 1898. In 1888 the
chemist Alfred Baur discovered the “artificial musks,” Musk Baur, and secondly, Musk Ketone in

1894, which was widely used until the 1990s because its production was easy and cheap.

From 1887 to 1915, Schimmel & Co, one of the major suppliers of essential oils at the

turn of the century, made biannual reports on the fluctuations in the supply of natural ingredients

as territories were colonized and re-colonized and their resources exploited. Gradually, in

reaction to the instability of access to natural resources, more and more perfumers turned to

synthetic fragrances and Schimmel’s catalogues reflected this. 1895 saw the report of the first

synthetic jasmine, and synthetic rose, neroli and ylang-ylang (despite its relative

inexpensiveness) followed. Artificial rose oil, was especially touted for its ease of use. It would

not “become cloudy in the cold, or separate into flakes. It could be relied upon to be always of

exactly the same composition.”

Ironically, the synthetic fragrance became an oxymoron: they were cheap, but colorless in

every way. The chemical make-up of an essence had been cracked, but in its creation, the

complexity and nuance of a natural fragrance was lost. But that didn’t deter perfumers from both

blending the synthetic with the natural and capitalizing on the brusque, one-dimensional quality

of the synthetic (Chanel No 5, created accidentally, is a good example of the latter).

One of the first perfumers to use a synthetic fragrance was Houbigant, whose Fougère

Royale, or Royal Fern, was built around an “accord of oakmoss, geranium, bergamot … and

synthetic coumarin” in 1882. However, this fragrance quickly vanished from the scene, and the

House of Guerlain is frequently cited as creating the modern perfume industry with the creation

of Jicky in 1889. A fougère, or fern fragrance, also based around coumarin, it included bois de
rose, vanillin, lemon, bergamot, lavender, mint, verbena, and sweet marjoram, with civet as a

fixative.

“When it first appeared, many women did not accept or understand it. The hint of

animal scent was too brutal and unexpected for women in 1889. In fact, men were

the first to appreciate it, and it wasn’t until 1912 that women’s magazines finally

began to sing its praises. The perfume bottle is inspired by medicine jars but with

a surprising ‘champagne bottle stopper’, symbolizing joy and celebration.”

The House of Guerlain quickly followed which such fragrances as Au bon Vieux Temps

(1890), Belle Epoque (1892), Après L’Ondée (1906) and L’Heure Bleue (1912).

A rival was found in François Coty, who completed the birth of the modern perfume age with his

revolutionary packaging techniques. Obsessed with the idea of creating fragrances and

presenting them in the perfect bottle, Coty moved to Grasse, the capital of perfumery, where he

entered the school of fragrance run the House of Chiris, one of the largest producers of floral

essences. Returning to Paris a year later, he met with rejection until, in 1904, after a flamboyant

demonstration, Coty got an order for twelve bottles of his latest creation, La Rose Jacqueminot,

from the Grands Magasins du Louvres, a major Parisian department store.

In 1908, he opened an elegant shop on the Place Vendôme, which was next door to René

Lalique, the great art nouveau jeweler. Asked to design Coty’s perfume bottles, Lalique was able

to mass produce them with iron molds. Selling perfume in uniquely designed bottles was

revolutionary enough, but Coty dared to allow customers to sample the perfume before

purchasing it! Designed by Lalique, small perfume bottles (testers), signs and labels were

produced to encourage ladies to try a dab of Ambre Antique or Le Muguet.

 As he did with many trends in the years leading up to the Great War, Paul Poiret was the

first couturier to create perfumes under his fashion label. In 1911, he set up two companies, one

for each of his daughters. For Martine, the youngest, he established Les Ateliers de Martine. For

Rosine, the eldest, he established Parfums de Rosine. With packaging designed by Erté, Raul

Duffy and Paul Iribe, his fragrance house was so successful, it was rumored Coty wished to buy

him out. His perfumers, Emannuel Bouler, Maurice Shaller and Henri Alméras brought Rosine

lasting fame with such fragrances as Borgia, Alladin, and Nuit de Chine, which ventured into

new territory, combining Oriental ingredients with intense and heady florals.

Hand in hand with the modern perfume industry were cosmetics. Into this field, women

featured heavily. Born into a socially prominent Chicago family, Harriet Hubbard Ayers spent a

year in Paris after the 1871 fire, thereafter moving to New York to begin business selling a

beauty cream called Recamier. Experiencing much success with this, she began to sell perfumes

with names like Dear Heart, Mes Fleurs, and Golden Chance. From this, she emerged to become

America’s first beauty columnist and the country’s best-paid, most popular female newspaper

journalist.

One of the most enduring names in the cosmetics industry is that of Helena Rubinstein.

Born in Poland, Rubenstein emigrated to Australia where, with the help of her sister, she began

to sell beauty treatments she claimed derived from the Carpathians. Leaving her sister Ceska to

assume the Melbourne shop’s operation, Rubenstein moved to London with $100,000 in 1908 to

began what was to become an international enterprise.

Her deadly rival, Elizabeth Arden, founded a North American-based beauty empire. Born

Florence Nightingale Graham, Arden traveled to France in 1912 to learn the beauty and facial
massage techniques used in the Paris beauty salons. Returning to the States with a collection of

rouges and tinted powders she created, she introduced modern eye makeup to North America and

the concept of the “makeover” in her salons. With her collaborator, Swanson, a chemist, they

created a “fluffy” face cream called Venetian Cream Amoretta, and a corresponding lotion,

named Arden Skin Tonic, which revolutionized cosmetics, bringing a scientific approach to

formulations.

Other beauty inventions included the hair-color formula, developed by chemist Eugene

Schueller (the founder of L’Oreal) in 1907, called Auréole; the Marcel wave, a process by which

heated tongs were used to curl and wave hair, invented by Francois Marcel, a French hairdresser

in 1872; and the Nestle Permanent Hair Wave, created by Charles Nestle in 1906, wherein an

electric heat machine was attached to the hair pads protecting the head and curled the hair.

Edwardian ladies also used papier poudre, which came in books of colored paper and were

pressed against the cheeks or nose to remove shine, burnt matchsticks to darken eyelashes, and

geranium and poppy petals to stain the lips. For those who wished to turn back the hands of time,

or at least halt them for a while, many ladies would paint their faces with enamel, thereby

“preserving” their beauty beneath a layer of white paint–and it was rumored Queen Alexandra

retained her youthful beauty long past the age of sixty with assistance by this process.

A dangerous trend during this period however, was the use of belladonna drops in the

eyes. For some reason, it was determined that dilated pupils were attractive to the opposite sex.

Interestingly enough, to be beautiful in the Edwardian era was to be brunette–blondes were

decidedly out of favor–and cosmetics were created specifically for the brunette, rosy-cheeked

woman in mind.
 Discreet beauty salons, such as the House of Cyclax, or the more sinister salon run by

Madame Rachel in the 1850s (who, despite her infamy, lives on in the eponymous mixture of

face power she created for brunettes), lined Bond Street, or near it, where veiled ladies could

enter side doors to obtain their face powders and creams, enamels, lip tinctures, and rouges. But

Selfridge’s threw open the doors when it debuted a make-up counter with its opening in 1910,

where women could openly purchase cosmetics and even try them on at the counter! This

shocked the older generations who stared in disbelief when young women–perhaps even

acquaintances–blithely walked up to the counter and professed knowledge of the different

cosmetics they wouldn’t have dreamed of admitting they knew. But times were a-changing. By

the 1920s, no longer was lily white-skin a sign of breeding: a healthy glowing suntan now

professed the wealth and leisure that allowed one to vacation at the beach, and rouging ones

knees and powdering ones face, in public naturally, became a common occurrence. The pursuit

of beauty was legitimized.