Shu Uemura

The History of Beauty

Q&A with Geoffrey G. Jones

The human desire to attract reflects basic biological motivations. Every human society from at least the ancient Egyptians onwards has used beauty products and artifacts to enhance attractiveness. However, beauty ideals have always varied enormously over time and between societies.

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Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry

Geoffrey G. Jones

This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today’s global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty, and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and its association with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world.

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Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power

Sarah Schaffer, Harvard Law School

This paper traces the history of lipstick’s social and legal regulation in Western seats of power, from Ur circa 3,500 B.C. to the present-day United States. Sliced in this manner, lipstick’s history emerges as heavily cyclical across the Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Western European, English, and American reigns of power. Examination of both the informal social and formal legal regulation of lipstick throughout these eras reveals that lipstick’s fluctuating signification concerning wearers’ class and gender has always largely determined the extent and types of lipstick regulations that Western societies put in place. 

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Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick

Meg Cohen & Karen Kozlowski

Freud dug it; Marilyn wouldn’t leave home without it. Lipstick: It’s an icon, a turn-on, an international symbol of the feminine mystique. Today it finds its place in history. Read My Lips is the book for everyone who’s ever fallen for the allure of painted lips or bought, borrowed, or stolen a tube of Five Alarm Red. A scenic tour of a lush landscape, Read My Lips celebrates the one cosmetic women can’t live without, the quick glam fix rivaled only by the little black dress for gotta-have-it-ness. For a device of such small stature, lipstick has inspired great feats. Read My Lips records them all—from Cleopatra, who enhanced her hue with henna, to Paloma Picasso, who donned her trademark red at the tender age of three. More than lip service, these colorfully illustrated pages include lipstick lore, art, literature, and photography, as well as memorable Hollywood moments and an inside take on the history, business, and psychology of painted lips. Chanel to Urban Decay, lipstick has left its mark as a girl’s best friend. Part owner’s manual, part cultural history, Read My Lips is a slick celebration of lipstick’s many traces. 

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Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Leonard Koren

Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional.

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Tadao Ando

The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated and trimmed away.

The Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Beauty

Gillian Rhodes

What makes a face attractive and why do we have the preferences we do? Emergence of preferences early in development and cross-cultural agreement on attractiveness challenge a long-held view that our preferences reflect arbitrary standards of beauty set by cultures. Averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism are good candidates for biologically based standards of beauty. A critical review and meta-analyses indicate that all three are attractive in both male and female faces and across cultures. Theorists have proposed that face preferences may be adaptations for mate choice because attractive traits signal important aspects of mate quality, such as health. Others have argued that they may simply be by-products of the way brains process information. Although often presented as alternatives, I argue that both kinds of selection pressures may have shaped our perceptions of facial beauty.

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Cosmetics as a Feature of the Extended Human Phenotype: Modulation of the Perception of Biologically Important Facial Signals

Nancy L. Etcoff, Shannon Stock, Lauren E. Haley, Sarah A. Vickery, David M. House

Research on the evolution of signaling has shown that animals frequently alter visual features, including color cues, to attract, intimidate or protect themselves from conspecifics. Humans engage in conscious manipulation of visual signals using cultural tools in real time rather than genetic changes over evolutionary time. Here, we investigate one tool, the use of color cosmetics.

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GCI Magazine

GCI magazine is the business information resource for marketers, brand managers, manufacturers and executives in the global beauty industry. Industry professionals look to GCI for the strategies, trends, analyses and market data that translate into brand impact.

Current news on the beauty industry.

View the Google search on classic lipstick cases.

Shu Uemura’s Rouge Unlimited range breaks all boundaries in color creation, formulated with revolutionary hybrid pigments for pure color pay-off. wide range of color, coverage, and textures allow unlimited lip creation.

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Shu Uemura Rouge Unlimited Lipstick Packaging

We always thought the transparency was important, but thought, Let’s make that the packaging.

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Gina Brooke is one of the most sought-after makeup artists in the business, thanks to her celebrity clients — Madonna, Britney Spears, Anne Hathaway — and her business sense. Five years ago she became Shu Uemura’s artistic director and is credited with single-handedly revamping the lash business for the L’Oréal-owned company after launching Lash Bars around the world. But Brooke left Shu Uemura in January after her contract was up, and shortly after her departure, L’Oréal announced it was pulling Shu Uemura color cosmetics from United States shelves, literally inducing eyelash panic among beauty fans. 

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The edokko, the natives of Tokyo, have a special gift: an ability to push the envelope, to innovate, to pioneer. That was certainly true of Shu Uemura, who went from being the only man in his Tokyo beauty school class to Hollywood makeup legend to international entrepreneur. In convention-worshiping Japan, he defied convention — and made his name and fortune by doing so.

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Shu Uemura

Founded and named after legendary Japanese make-up artist and beauty pioneer, Shu Uemura, the brand breaks all boundaries in beauty creation. Inspired by an aesthetic and professional spirit of the artisan, the Shu Uemura brand was developed on the founder’s holistic philosophy that beautiful make-up starts with beautiful skin. Believing that quality of skincare is essential in creating beautiful make-up, the most advanced skincare formulas using powerful phyto-ingredients are used as the first step to revealing every woman’s unique beauty.

View the company website.       Read his bio.

Tetsuo Fukaya

Founding Manager at KAITAISHINSHA Inc.

Calvin Tsao

Zack McKown

Lena Bragina

Elena Frampton

Hillary Fulmer

Randi Mageli

Nisha Patel

Richard Rhodes

Sandra Steving

Andrew Tripp