Vintage Makeup Guide – Archive 1940’s Makeup Tutorial

1940’s makeup Tutorial – Face contouring / Lipstick and Hairstyles.

The classic Vintage Makeup Guide to the 1940’s from Miss Ratherly Stern.
Transcribed with illustrations.!!
The ideal facial contour is supposed to be the oval.
But some of us have round faces,square faces or long faces.
What can we do to make our faces appear more oval?

1940’s Makeup – Contouring

1.Round Faces

Don’t wear too high a neck line. It shortens the neck and increases the effect of roundness!
Hair well off the forehead and flat against the temple !
Thin lipsticks, correctly applied to follow the natural mouth line !
A V neck completes the picture and gives the impression of a little more neck length
to give the impression of an oval face!

Round Faces – The Right Look 

Round Faces – The Wrong Look

2.Square Faces:
Keep away from haircuts that hang in vertical lines near the side of the face and jawline in.This over empasisies the squareness of the jaw.Avoid straight horizontal lines near the face – like thin lips / round or high horizontal necks.
Fill out the lower lip with your lipstick.
Hair should fall in curves around the jawline.
Wear a V neck line to pull the attention down from jaw.
Pure logic when you think about it.

Square Faces – The right look

Square Faces – The Wrong look

3.The Long / Narrow Face.
Don’t wear V necks – This adds to the impression of length.
Avoid Piled up high hair on top of head as this also adds to the length of the face.
Hair should be off the top if the head and fluffed out at the sides to give the thin face added width.Finally a high neck line or choke distracts from the long neck ! Voila !

Long/ Narrow faces – The right look

Long / Narrow Faces – The wrong look

copyright-April2010 Glamourdaze

Have another look at the video on our YouTube site.

Finally – if you’re really keen to know what women in the 1940s actually learned when it comes to make-up and beauty, then The Complete 1940’s Make-up and Beauty Guide might just be a pleasant gift to your sweet vintage heart.

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3 thoughts on “Vintage Makeup Guide – Archive 1940’s Makeup Tutorial”

  1. This is great advice! I have a round face, though i find that smiling makes it worse as my cheeks are so rotund! x

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