How to do Vintage Style Makeup : 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s

I have a few tutorials/history lessons on vintage makeup. These include both day and evening looks, popular colors, and application tips:

• Victorian Makeup – 1830s to 1900s early makeup use
• 1900-1910 Makeup & Beauty Products
• 1920s Makeup History and Tutorial
• 1930s Makeup History and Tutorial
• 1940s Makeup History and Tutorial (with a bit on finger nail polish)
• 1950s Makeup History and Tutorial 
• 1960s Makeup and Beauty Products
• 1970s Makeup history and basic tutorials
• 1980s Makeup – There is a section towards the end of this article

Vintage Makeup Books

If you want to learn how to do vintage style makeup, you can look up videos on YouTube, or read a how to article, or look at pictures and try to mimic the style. Plenty of women try these tactics, however the result is often still very modern or movie star glam, and not real everyday woman’s vintage makeup looks. The best way to learn authentic vintage style makeup application is from original sources. After all, that’s how women in the past learned — from books and magazines, not YouTube.

Lucky for us, we don’t have to scour eBay, garage sales, or our grandmother’s attics to find these guides. Fellow fashion blogger Stevie at Glamour Daze has digitally remastered four vintage makeup and beauty guides and made them available for sale. They are exquisite!

While each full-color guide clearly explains and illustrates the techniques for applying makeup from each decade, they also go into quite a bit of detail on how to choose the best shade of rouge or lipstick and how to compensate for facial features which are not ideal to the time. I have a square face, thin lips, and a big forehead, so I was very pleased that each guide had solutions for enhancing or un-enhancing my unique features plus era-specific tips on getting the correct look.

For example in the 1920s guide I learned:

 ” A small bit of of cold cream rubbed on the upper lid and under the eyes near the nose gives it that natural “dewy” look we read about in poetry and sometimes in real life! It is most attractive.”

and……

• Choosing a hairstyle to enhance your face,
• Choosing a perfume to add more beauty,
• What colors of clothes complement your hair color,
• How to lose weight: what to eat, how to exercise (sample exercises included) , and how to practice good posture.

I wish I could go into more detail about all the interesting and useful tips I have gleaned from these vintage makeup guides, but I think it would be better for you to get your own copy and see for yourself. (Seriously, I don’t recommend products lightly, but this one is worth a five star rating.)

The guides are available as one bundle with all four guides or you can buy them individually if you are only interested in one decade. Click the picture to read more about each guide.

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