Max Factor by Fred E. Basten

Cosmetic allergies.

Any of you allergic girls or boys and especially parents of allergic girls and boys know exactly what I mean.

When you think about it, how did we get to this make-up wearing era? Where did it all start?

The movies, the early ones, the silent ones.

And who was putting make up on those early moving picture stars? Who reinvented the industry for the then modern age?

Max Factor.

If you're curious about the cosmetics industry and the man who started it all, Max Factor, then check out this latest book: Max Factor by Fred E. Basten. (Full disclosure: the editor of this book is a close friend).

Here's the beginning of John Updike review from the New Yorker:

"The happy story of Max Factor, as enthusiastically told by Fred E. Basten in “Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World” (Arcade; $24.95), begins, like a movie, at a high-energy moment of extreme peril:

On a winter night in February 1904, twenty-seven-year-old Max Faktor huddled with his wife and three young children in a Russian forest, frightened more for the family he had kept secret for nearly five years than of the wind and snow or even the approaching czar’s men calling his name. Only days earlier, Max Faktor was a favorite of the royal family and was esteemed by the royal court. Now he was being hunted as a fugitive.

The little (“barely five feet tall”) Polish Jew’s involvement with the czar had advanced with the quick progressions of a fairy tale. One of ten children born to a worker in the textile mills of Lodz, he was reared by his siblings and had scant formal education. At the age of seven, he was set to selling oranges, peanuts, and candy in the lobby of Lodz’s Czarina Theatre; he later called this his “introduction to the world of make-believe.”

Cool.

Comments

Christine said…
I'm curious about what people are allergic to in cosmetics.

I'm allergic to the corn in the lipsticks, lotions, powders, creams, etc. I assume that anyone with fragrance allergy would be allergic to most of the stinky stuff out in most makeup, and people with metal allergies would have problems with some things.

What else? I have no idea what is in makeup.
Katie Lou said…
We don't really know what all my kids are allergic to in cosmetics, but alot. I do know DD got my lipstaick out of my purse once, smeared it on her lips and had a ana reaction. No more lipstick of any kind in my house. It had sesame oil in it!!
Both children react to all shampoos,soaps, lotions unless C&F. Anything with any kind of seed. Anything that smells. Anything with dairy for DD. I do/can wear clinque(sp) and they both do fine with me wearing that, but anything else is off limits.
Strassiline said…
I only use natural cosmetic.. give it a try!
Katie Lou said…
I was using bare minerals, and both DC reacted to it horibbly.
We have also tried Calfornia baby on them, to have a little bit of a nice smell, and it was a no go also.

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