Nevertheless, in the pursuit of educational material on modern-day elegance, team Deenathe1st has captured the salient historical points in bullets. These facts will lend greater depth to your next brunch meeting when someone asks what shade of crimson you are wearing or if it’s a Nars rouge on your lips. Answer, “Non, darling. I’m wearing a red that totally symbolizes the never-ending shifting of beauty and illusion. It’s bigger than any one brand.” Perhaps not the answer they expected! 

Read on to get a free sample of ‘beam with intellectual glee’ for your face…

• Historical accounts have laid claim to Cleopatra wearing red on her lips mixed from fish scales, crushed insects and beeswax. However, there are disclaimers that the Egyptian Queen preferred carmine - a very dark red made from cochineal bugs. 
• From the 7th Century onwards, alchemists in the Middle East created lipsticks from natural dyes and substances like henna, saffron, and ground minerals.
• Ancient Mesopotamia’s Queen Puabi allegedly wore red lip paint to depict strength. However the white lead and crushed red pigment from rocks created a dangerous stain. Not quite like something you’d pick up from the Chanel or Fenty Beauty counter.
• In the Persian Empire dating 550 BCE - 330 BCE, lipstick was deemed to be a symbol of wealth and high social status. Quite the opposite to Ancient Greece where the lower echelons of female society wore it to mark that they were available for hire.
• In medieval Islamic culture, beauty cosmetics were also deemed useful for hygiene and health reasons. Therefore, its embrace was seen across women of many social statuses across the region.
• Queen Elizabeth 1 of England claimed that the rouge on her lips gave her mystical healing powers, which is ironic considering its contents were probably toxic and may have contributed to her death.
• Beauty entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden inspired women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Emmeline Pankhurst to wear red lipstick as a badge of courage when she distributed lipstick tubes to suffragettes in 1912.
• In 1915, Maurice Levy invented the first metal lipstick tube (before this, lipstick was made of deer tallow, castor oil, and beeswax and came wrapped in silk paper. Not so easy to tote around in a chic handbag).
• Coco Chanel was rumored not to like her guests to wear red lipstick because it stained the white linen tablecloths and napkins.
• Early Western silver screen star Clara Bow wore red lipstick and laid claim to creating the ‘Cupid’s Bow’ by forming an exaggerated shape at the top of the upper lip. Early cinema stars would actually wear very dark lipstick so that on black and white film it would mimic bright red IRL.
• MAC’s Retro Matte Lipstick in Ruby Woo launched in 1999 and one still sells every 15 seconds across the world. This makes it the best-selling product for the brand to date.

All of these stats and facts will either inspire you to slick on some rouge lipstick, or have you reach for a simple nourishing balm as an act of defiance against the status quo. Walk your own way!

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