Radio Times this week claims that the twist-up lipstick case was manufactured originally from WW1 cartridge cases. It sounds feasible but I`ve never seen one portrayed as trench art. I don`t know exactly how the dispenser works but could it easily be made from a cartridge?

"A taste for razzle-dazzle wasn't the only unlikely fallout of the First World War; there was also the twist-up lipstick case, nattily created from a cartridge shell. Ordinary women couldn't get enough of them, entranced by preened and powdered movie stars like Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow."

I've never seen one from WW1 but also never seen one made from bullet case of any description - that being said, I've never looked.

Mick

I'm just getting this vision of some poor sap winning a VC for saving his CO's lippie from a German raiding party. "Perkins ... fetch my 'Autumn Gold'. You know it goes with khaki so well." "Yes sir. And Lt Fotherington-Smythe's 'Spring Blush'? It goes with this year's bursting shell motif so beautifully. All the lads in the Coldstream are wearing it, I'm told"

Damned bad luck Sir! Smudged your eye shadow - can't go over the top like that.............

A lot of people remain unaware that the trench periscope was invented as a result of the innovotive use of a compact mirror attached to a hairbrush.

'All the lads in the Coldstream are wearing it, I'm told"

Not in those colours!

Sounds like a tall tale to me, Phil!

As a single man I'm no expert on the mechanics of a lipstick case but surely part of it has to twist? You couldn't achieve that effect with cartridge cases. And even if you used two, one twisting round the other, you would need SAA of two different calibres.

Surely it would be cheaper to manufacture from scratch, although the possibility of using recucled brass from cartridge cases cannot be discounted.

Ron

It took time to catch on then. Clara Bow was 13 in 1918. Marlene Dietrich was 17 and Jean Harlow was 7. Clara Bow was the first to become a star around 1926. For Dietrich it was 1929 and for Harlow it was 1930.

Don't forget Mary Pickford.

I think I've seen lighters that slip into another case. I also suspect that the lipstick case is more likely to be a post war piece of trenchart.

I can’t find any evidence for this. Rather than history, the statement reads like journalism in which a number of events are conflated to arrive at an eye-catching conclusion that that is not quite true but isn’t entirely false either.

As I mentioned earlier, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow did not become role models until, at the earliest, eight years after the war so the claim or at least the supporting evidence looks suspect.

Sources agree that Guerlain in France was the first to produce lipstick in stick form around 1910. It was supplied in a paper wrapping. The metal case was introduced by Maurice Levy of the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut. This was in 1915, well before the USA entered the war and presumably before the nation was gearing up for war. The Levy tube was a slide design operated by push-up levers. A reference by Riordan seems to indicate that the tubes were elliptical.

Sources also agree that James Bruce Mason of Nashville, Tennessee invented the first twist-up lipstick case in 1923. This too, was elliptical. It is often described as the first swivel lipstick tube but I don’t think that is quite true. Mason’s design used a lead screw operated by a knob at the tube base to jack up the lipstick. He started something though. According to Riordan, the US Patent Office issued upwards of one hundred lipstick dispenser patents over the next few years.

The process for making closed-end tubes, whether cylindrical for cartridges or elliptical for early lipstick cases, is the same. It involves rolled sheet metal stock that is progressively drawn into tubular form by a series of stamping operations. Thus a cartridge manufacturer could readily diversify into lipstick tubes, and vice versa. An article in The Age newspaper tells of a factory at Footscray near Melbourne doing just this during WWII. Indeed, the Scovill Manufacturing Company whose Levy tubes started all this was itself a manufacturer of munitions and artillery fuses, as well as military buttons, brass lamps, cameras and coin blanks for the US Mint.

So my hypothesis is that lipstick cases used the same manufacturing techniques as cartridges, and initially may well have used war surplus metal roll stock but not surplus cartridge cases. Lipstick cases were made on the same machinery in the same plants and by the same companies that had made cartridge cases. In the 20s and 30s, it is likely that the two manufactures coexisted in some plants.

Sources:
Maggie Angeloglou, A History of Make-Up (Macmillan, 1970).
Richard Corson, Fashions in Makeup: From ancient to modern times (Owen, 2003).
“From Lipstick Cases to Cartridges,” The Age, January 31, 1940.
Teresa Riordan, Inventing Beauty: A history of the innovations that have made us beautiful (Broadway Books, 2004).
Jessica Pallingston, Lipstick: A celebration of a girl's best friend (Simon & Schuster, 1999).
Meg Cohen Ragas and Karen Kozlowski, Read My Lips: A cultural history of lipstick (Chronicle Books, 1998).
Sarah Schaffer, Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power, Law school class paper, 2006.
Sally Pointer, The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics (Stroud , Sutton,, 2005).
Fenja Gunn, The Artificial Face: A history of cosmetics (Hippocrene Books, 1975).
James Bruce Mason, Toilet Article: US Patent 1,470,994.
John Emsley, Vanity, Vitality and Virility: The science behind the products you love to buy (Oxford University Press, 2004).

So, made from cartridges, it`s unlikely to have even been a post-war item for tourists.