Oh, yes; for me, it was instant love. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup when I was growing up, so I first really experienced it as a college freshman… and it was just a head-over-heels kind of love.
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Yes, I discovered my mom’s makeup at a very young age and it all went downhill from there. I lived for the moment when my parents would allow me to wear it out of the house and that I could get my own.
I now have a stash that could last me several lifetimes.
I loved makeup before I started using it! As a child, I used to sit next to my mom when she’d put her makeup on and loved how glamorous it was.
Yes! I used to love to watch her get ready when she’d let me. If she kissed me goodbye I would dab the lipstick onto my cheek as a blush. I loved the scent of her lipstick. I still remember it – Revlon’s Bamboo Bronze. She never wore foundation, it was just the lipstick and mascara and a bunch of hot roller curled hair but she was always so glamorous to me.
You wouldn’t know it from looking at me now, but yes, I loved makeup and color when I first started playing with it. I was in elementary school and my best friend’s mother was a model so she had cases of makeup that she let us use and we entertained ourselves for hours. I wasn’t allowed to wear it anywhere but it was love at first try.
It is funny but a model played a large part in my love of makeup also, Jill. My mom didn’t wear makeup when I was growing up but as most teenagers of my time, I loved looking at the magazines and would always see these beautifully made up women and just wanted to be like them.
I have loved makeup (and skincare items too) since forever! (hence all those reminiscences about Mary Quant makeup and Erace as lipstick way back in the 60’s).
I love that cool 60s look!
Loved. But I’ve always loved it. I was never really allowed to wear makeup growing up, so it was like the forbidden fruit and I was so fascinated by it. My grandma and my sister would sometimes let me use theirs because they knew I loved it so much. When I was 14 or so my mom took me to target and let me buy a few items including a physician’s formula baked eyeshadow trio, Maybelline dream matte mousse foundation (lol so cakey), CoverGirl eyeliner, and L’Oréal telescopic mascara. Oh and a liquid illuminator from revlon that I mistakenly thought was a foundation. I found out quickly that it wasn’t once I slathered it on my whole face. ? Back then I didn’t realize that I have yellow undertones, or that eyebrows were a thing, or blush and bronzer for that matter. But I loved how wearing makeup made me feel, even though I probably looked like a mess walking around with foundation way too pink for me, eyeliner on my lower lashline, and blonde peach fuzz for eyebrows. I’ve come a long way ?
Sorry for the long post but it’s fun to reminisce on the beginnings of my makeup obsession!
My ole lady did not use much makeup, but she did not object to my purchases. One thing she did not object that I did. She did her brows where I don’t like to enhance my brows. I don’t think I like or love makeup when I started. I think I just wanted to be like everyone else in high school. These Catholic school girls wore a lot of makeup in the first high school I went. When I switched to the second Catholic high school, the girls were kinder and more tasteful with their makeup application. There, was the time, I started to cherish my purchases.
Well, I was very excited upon receiving that 13th birthday makeup stash…. until I realized it didn’t apply to my super hooded, double eyelids the way I saw it on my adoptive Mom and others around me. I couldn’t understand why eyeshadow didn’t work on my lids, because I actually thought one put it on their literal mobile lids up into the crease only. Now, once my equally hooded, double eyelidded cousin showed me how to apply it a few years later, I DID fall in love with eye makeup. She taught me to drag my shadow up and outward onto my hooded area, and use a second darker color to define my “crease” or lack thereof, creating one! She also turned me onto the Chola Goth look. Thank you, Debbie!
(My Mom was not so happy with *this* next development, though! This was 1974 not 1995!)
Chola Goth, too funny. Did you see the Frida collection at Ulta? Very nice packaging, and somewhere there’s the quote ‘Never apologize for who you are.’ I’m in.
I was completely smitten! I wasn’t allowed to use anything but mascara, vaseline as a lip gloss and brown Cover Girl eyeliner until I was 15. When I turned 18, I wanted to wear all the things on my face and eyes but had no clue how to do that so there were many, many attempts to look in style or on trend that failed miserably (bright sparkly eyeshadow all the way up to the brow, too dark eyeliner all around the lids, bright brush, frosted lipstick). I think that’s why I am forever grateful and brand loyal to MAC. I was trying so desperately to look effortless and sparkly and coordinated like the magazines and everytime I felt like I just looked like some heavy metal hair band guitar player so I just gave up and went back to to vaseline lip gloss and eyeliner. I had bought my first set of neutrals from Ultima II at JCPenneys which was great, but I had no technique. I walked into Broadway for my first MAC appointment a few weeks later and was amazed. I couldn’t get over the transformation. I would finally be able to do that on my own, or at least try to mimic it and since I had the right colors, even messing up would be a halfway decent job. I’ve always appreciated the way MAC artists knew how to place color and how to make it all meld together for a cohesive look, even more so now as I age.
I disliked it intensely, and my feelings for it didn’t improve for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I gave it up for about 15 years out of sheer annoyance.
Not as a jhs/hs teen. My friends didn’t wear m/u and still don’t. Not much for my mum, either. But she had good skin and no circles. I was older when the Mary Quant, Twiggy, Biba, Stones GFs, London thing hit. I didn’t become a serious hoarder until the late 70s. Though, being in children ‘s theatre, I did have to have my own l/s in 4th grade. What a long strange trip it’s been.
Nope! I was a quiet and shy kid and my mom’s always been fairly disinterested in anything more than the basics, so while I got a set of basic cheapo makeup in either jr high or early high school I was never particularly interested in it. Not hanging out with people who were into makeup just added to my meh feelings. It was fine for other people, but why would I want to bother? I eventually getting those old Revlon cream eyeshadow quads and thinking they were neat because I could apply them with a finger, but that and cheap powder foundation were about the extent of my caring. But after getting my makeup done in store (by a Smashbox rep, thanks for that first peachy-gold duochrome eyeshadow) I finally started to realize that holy crap, this stuff actually looks good on me if it’s done right, and can be something fun I actually want to do, and that started the slow descent into owning way too many eyeshadow palettes (among other things.)
My love was pretty much at first sight! My mother didn’t wear makeup when I was growing up but started to wear it after I did. I was 13 when I was first allowed to wear makeup, based on when the Pastor’s daughter got to wear makeup. I loved the colours, the artistic side of me was born and I would sit for hours just playing with different eye looks. I was a true product of the 60’s and 70’s and would read Seventeen, Tiger Beat, etc and always got inspiration from the models in the magazines. Then when I was in my early 20’s I met Cheryl Tiegs cousin and we became friends. I learned a lot from her.
Oh yes – it was love at first sight for me. And it has been ever since.
I always loved makeup. I used to watch my mom put her makeup on all the time but I didn’t wear anything until I was 13. There were makeup items I hated wearing, like mascara. I hated the way it felt, so I rarely used it. I always loved lipstick. That might’ve been my first love lol. I didn’t care for foundation so I only used it when I had a face rash or something. I occasionally wore makeup throughout high school and early college but I didn’t truly discover my huge love for makeup until my mid-20s.
I fell in love with makeup as a 3-year-old looking at her mom’s collection. It was even better when I got to start wearing it.
No, it was not “love at first” sight for me.
My mom took me to the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon in Sah Francisco when I was 13 yrs old to get my makeup done for a wedding I was to be in. The makeup artist there did a very glam, very Elizabeth Taylor look on me. I cried because I looked like a grown woman, not a kid anymore. I also did not like the feel of the heavy foundation on my skin. Not long after that, my mom took me to what was a new brand at the time, Clinique o try to clear up my teenage acne. Cliniques’s method of treating acne then was to dry out and excoriate your skin with harsh acid & alcohol based products. Needless to say, that did not work and they sold me an extremely drying and difficult to apply water-based foundation. It took me until I was 21 yrs old at university to figure out my skin was dry and aggravating it with harsh acids, benzoyl peroxide & alcohol only worsened it.
Yep. Clinique had this shake it foundation. So many things have changed since 40 years ago. Back then it was not wrong to squeeze the pimples, Time does fly.
Yes! Same type of sentiment. Back in the day, if you had dry skin and fairly ignorant about skincare, you were in big trouble. The first time my skin actually loved me is when I bought a bunch of Shiseido products in the early 90’s. But, it was real sticker shock.
By the size of my collection, it was obsession at first site.
LOVED! Natural born caretaker, personal makeup artist, dresser / stylist so I first used makeup on other ppl as a small child. My grandmother’s RA made her unable to use her hands so she was quite the critic and minimalist. My uncle whom I lovingly refer to as Uncle Crossie always said, “A lady never leaves the house without a bit of rouge.” Often followed by unflattering blue eyeshadow & something pink & glossy on lips. By the time I was 11 or 12 I was already wearing foundation & didn’t like to be seen without lipstick. Not much has changed.
Oh, most definitely head over heels LOVE ?
Love at first sight!
I loved it! I was a tween but was forbid from it but that didn’t stop me from my obsession. When I graduated 8th grade I got the green light and my mom gave me a makeup mirror as a graduation present.
I wouldn’t say I loved it, I liked it a lot but it wasn’t until I started going out properly (17ish) that I really loved it. I love it more the better I get at it, especially now when I get my base perfect and have that dewy glow. I didn’t like anything on my lips except lip balm until I was maybe 17 but now it’s full face or nothing! My mum only really does her eyes, but I have gotten her a few MAC lipsticks she loves and my love of makeup even got my best friend more into it!
I have loved it as long as I can remember, from seeing my mom’s bright lipsticks that she had but never wore when I was around 4 or 5. I used to beg her to put those on me, which she did if we were staying in. Within a few years, I was buying my own from Avon.
By age 12, I was a full fledged in-store shopper. It’s what my mom would use to reward me if I got A’s in school. One new item per A (at the local Caldor, the 70s/80s version of Walmart in our area). I got foundation, cream blush in a purply shade, a lipliner to go with the lipsticks I already had.
At age 13, my oldest sister got me a makeup bag filled with DS products for Xmas. I was in heaven. I wore blue eyeshadow to school and didn’t care that other kids made fun of me. I knew I was at a different level.
To this day, my mom still doesn’t wear it, and doesn’t have much, but my love has never gone away. And it all started with her Butterfly Pink (Revlon, I think) lipstick.