Joan Crawford and the Transformative Power of Makeup

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Web tutorials make it easy to identify buzzworthy beauty trends that have filtered down to the masses: contouring, shimmery highlighters, and overlined lips. Our modern champion of the look, of course, is Kylie Jenner, who has has parlayed her social clout into a multimillion dollar cosmetics business.

But Kylie actually owes quite a bit to the original artist of optical illusion, Joan Crawford, who first made a name for herself by coloring outside her lip’s lines.

“In the period of her very long career, [Joan] had many signature looks,” Creative and Image Director for Dior Makeup Peter Philips tells CR. “Her makeup was created for cinema, for the big screen. So big was the word! Naturally, she had mesmerizingly large eyes, so her face could carry large outlined lips or jumbo eyebrows.”

Crawford’s rags-to-riches story is rather typical of early Hollywood. Born Lucille LeSueur on this day in 1905, the future star’s natural complexion featured freckles and red hair. Entering Tinseltown as a dancer, she looked almost unrecognizable to the woman we know of today. With those unmistakable pencil-thin eyebrows, dark hair, and a sharp, dark lip, she fit the mold of what was “in” at the time for young women of the flapper persuasion.

Enter: MGM’s legendary Louis B. Mayer, who recognized her acting talent, and decided to revamp her image. In addition to changing her name (through a public content, no less), he also also enlisted famed Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor to give her a look. He created Crawford’s signature lip with one simple move: wiping lipstick across the top line of her overdrawn lip, a technique he called “the smear.”

The physical transformation was obvious: the bolder lip not only appeared more sultry, but also drew out her bone structure, making her jaw and cheekbones strong and defined. Interestingly, there was a subtle, substantial change in regards to her public persona—she was no longer LeSueur, epitome of flapper style. She became the one and only Joan Crawford, who stood out from a sea of other actresses. In this regard, she’s a near-perfect example of the identity-creating power of makeup.

“Makeup can be used as a transformation tool, it doesn’t have to be, but it can be,” Philips says of how cosmetics can change the way women feel about themselves. “This transformation can give the wearer a boost of confidence, as if she was playing a character.”

For Crawford, it wasn’t just the literal characters she played on screen, but the character of the “movie star” that she played in real life. She experimented with her look over the years (her eyebrows became thicker, she lined her lower eyelids, and her hair color changed often), but was never caught without that signature lip smear. A go-to beauty look is something many women can relate to. It offers women a way to control their appearance and boost their confidence when facing the world. Apparently in England in World War II, when supplies were scarce and materials were rationed, makeup—especially lipstick—was a humble way to “cling onto some sense of normality and dignity.”

It would not be entirely accurate to claim that Factor invented the act of overdrawing lips. But through his celebrity clientele he did introduce and popularize the technique for everyday use. Plump lips, often crafted with the help of overdrawing, have maintained popularity ever since, and now there are a variety of new ways to achieve the look.

“It’s all about balancing out your makeup, don’t go too much against your natural lip shape and wear the look with confidence so you won’t look like a cartoon,” Philips advises. Whether finding further tips online, in magazine, or by simply playing around, those who choose to utilize makeup to alter their appearance can take solace in the knowledge that their experimentation comes from a long history of taking control over one’s identity, and self creation.”

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