Maybelline Ads Show How Little Beauty has Changed

This year, Maybelline marks a century in the beauty business. To celebrate the milestone, we asked the company to share some of its vintage product pictures, ad images and commercials with us. They were both entertaining and enlightening. What's most surprising here is that while trends and looks superficially change, nothing has really changed fundamentally in beauty. Women still want lush lashes and brows and perfect skin 100 years later, though the way advertisers have marketed those products to women has changed quite a bit, as you'll see below.

By the 1930s, "eye lash darkener," as it was called, was officially a thing, and Maybelline sold it in cake form with a separate brush. There was a scare surrounding a lash dye at the time called Lash Lure (not made by Maybelline), which blinded some women, so the company was very careful to say that no dyes were used and that the products were "safe."

In the '30s, brow pencils and eye shadow also came into vogue. This was also the birth of the makeup tutorial's earliest ancestor. The brand produced ads of Betty Grable demonstrating a three-step application process, which ran in popular magazines. The company also notes that in the '30s, the time of the Great Depression, women couldn't afford a new dress, but they could certainly afford a new eye shadow. Sound familiar? (Ahem, hi, 2008.)

In 1990, Maybelline changed hands again, this time to investment firm Wasserstein Perella & Co. One of the most famous ad slogans of all time was also introduced during this decade: "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline." (Admit it. You just sang the jingle in your head.) Christy Turlington featured prominently in commercials during the '90s. L'Oreal acquired the brand in 1996 and still owns it. Over the last 20 years, the brand has signed buzzy models like Jourdan Dunn, Gigi Hadid, Adriana Lima, Freja Beha Erichsen, Jessica White, Charlotte Free and Shu Pei Qin, and sponsored global fashion weeks.