Tattoo Lipstick Ad, detail, from Woman’s Home Companion, March 1937.
“The New Tattoo gives lips exciting South Sea redness that’s transparent, pasteless, highly indelible . . . yet makes them moist, lustrous, smooth, soft . . . endlessly yielding. . . . How his heart will pound at the touch of lips so smooth, so caressingly soft!”
When I tried to find out more about the Tattoo makeup brand, I discovered that these Tattoo ads which appeared in black and white in Woman’s Home Companion appeared in full color in other magazines, such as Vogue. It was called “the New Tattoo” in the ad dated 1930, but here is an ad with only four colors, so it may be even earlier.
Tattoo lipstick ad, Woman’s Home Companion, March 1937.
To see this ad in color, click here.
This ad for Tattoo brand lipstick stresses that the color is “highly indelible” — although not, fortunately, as indelible as a tattoo. It’s a lip “stain,” available in five colors: coral, exotic, natural, pastel, and Hawaiian. (Don’t you wonder what “exotic” and “Hawaiian” meant? Presumably one of them was darker than coral red.) There’s a lot to like in this ad: shoes that would be impossible to walk in on a beach; the cutout below the bow on the reclining woman’s swimsuit (I bought a suit like that in 1978); the man’s tank-top swimsuit (men had begun to bare their chests by 1937; I’ve even seen a man’s transitional swimsuit with a top that zipped off!)
Men’s bathing suits in an illustration by Cordrey, Woman’s Home Companion, April 1937.
The Tattoo lipstick case had a topless, grass-skirted dancer on it:
Tattoo lipstick tube from ad, 1937.
I didn’t find a history of Tattoo makeup online, but the earliest dated color advertisement I found was from 1930. (Click here) It included a coupon for a trial sample in your choice of color. The latest dated color image online was from 1949 (Click here.) Both were posted on flikr by totallymystified.
Tattoo lipstick ad, Woman’s Home Companion, April, 1937.
“The New Tattoo gives lips a strangely intoxicating redness; a sweetly tempting moistness and luster that only South Sea colors have…. There’s a magical ingredient blended into the New Tattoo that give lips a thrilling new kind of softness . . . an endlessly yielding softess!”
Pacific Tourism Grew in the 1930s
Tourism to Hawaii, via luxurious cruise ships, increased in the 1930s. The “white ships” of the Matson Line sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii and the South Seas. Quite a few movies with a tropical setting were made in the thirties, including Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Hurricane (1937) and Her Jungle Love (1938) — both starring queen-of-the-sarong Dorothy Lamour, Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), and Honolulu (1939). Bing Crosby and his movie Waikiki Wedding (1937) popularized the song “Sweet Leilani,” written in 1934.
Tattoo lipstick ad, Woman’s Home Companion, February 1937.
I can’t help noticing (Grrrr….) that the “South Seas Enchantress” in these ads is always subordinated to the one with fair skin, even though a “healthy” tan was very fashionable in the 1930s.
“Don’t worry darling, you’ll look quite respectable in a day or two.” Sept. 1936; from The Way to Wear’em.
Perhaps a tan made darker lipstick more generally acceptable and less artificial looking.
Tattoo Waterproof Mascara
Ad for Tattoo Mascara, Woman’s Home Companion, April 1936.
“Needs no water to apply.” By the 1940s, Maybelline also sold mascara in a tube . . .
Maybelline products from an ad in Vogue, August 1943.
. . .but, well into the 1950s, mascara was more familiar in that red plastic tray — as solid-form mascara which you moistened with the included brush. You were supposed to use water, but many women used spit. (Ugh!)
Maybelline Mascara ad, from Delineator, 1924.
By 1929 Maybelline sold both this familiar “matchbox” of mascara, and a waterproof liquid mascara in a bottle; both came in brown or black.
Mabelline waterproof liquid mascara with round brush, 1929.
Tattoo’s waterproof mascara came in a tube in the 1930s:
Tattoo waterproof mascara in a tube. Women’s Home Companion, April 1936. It cost 50 cents, but you could get a 30-day sample for a dime.
Tattoo mascara in a tube came in three colors: black, brown, and blue (!)
Read More About the Development of Lipsticks:
My search for “Tattoo” ads led me to a really excellent Australian site: Cosmetics and skin.com
For their well written and beautifully illustrated article on lipsticks, click here.
Readers of Moby Dick may be interested to learn that spermaceti was a major ingredient in 1930s lipsticks….
Actual lip tattooing in 1933
The modernmechanix blog found this article from 1933, headlined “Lip Tattooing Is the Latest Fad” in Hollywood, and commented, “I hope she doesn’t change her mind.” A reminder to anyone thinking about getting “permanent makeup:” your face will change as you age, your eyebrows won’t stay in the same place, and fashions in makeup will change, too. Imagine if Lucille Ball had had her lipstick permanently tattooed all over her upper lip in 1950; she’d have been stuck with it for the next 39 years!
witness2fashion 
Fascinating!
If I remember correctly, Phylis Diller had tattooed eyeliner. It would be interesting to see how that looked as she aged.
I guess she just kept wearing those false eyelashes, too. I’ve read that the pigment in eyeliner tattoo can cause problems with some medical procedures — something to do with magnetism. Perhaps the tattoo artists have solved it by now. I’ve had enough bad haircuts to know I’d never trust a stranger — whose aesthetic sense may not be anything like mine — to do something permanent to my face. Luckily, a bad haircut is temporary.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered Tattoo cosmetics before, so thanks for the introduction. I’d love to have one of the lipstick cases.
They show up on Ebay and Etsy from time to time — and yes, they are striking!
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