Why Vintage Skin Care?

Ashley Black
Sep 8, 2015
2 min read

I've always been a lover of all things vintage. I live in an apartment built in 1930, for 16 years I drove a 1966 Mustang, I love vintage style clothing, stockings witht a seam up the back, red lipstick and pincurls.....but i always used "modern" skin care products. But I could never find anything that really worked. I have very dry skin made worse by the fact I live in Colorado, but I also break out and now that I'm in my early thirties I'm starting to think about anti-aging. So what's a girl to do?

I started thinking what did girls in the 1940's use to care for their skin? It couldn't have been too complicated right? The country was in the middle of WWII. I would imagine skin care wasn't at the top of most women's lists of concerns. So I started my research and found cold creams. I loved the idea of a cream that worked as a makeup remover, cleanser and moisturizer all in one. I'll admit it I'm lazy when it comes to following a skin care routine. When I'm tired and ready for bed the last thing I want to do is splash my face with water. And with cold cream I didn't have to. I just rubbed the cream into my skin and then wiped it off with a hot wash cloth. Which feels amazing and is so relaxing!

I started by using Pond's Cold Cream. I mean that's the standard right? They've been around forever and their name is sunonumos with cold cream. So I tried it and I liked it but then I looked at the ingredients and thought there must be something that isn't filled with so many chemicals. What did the cold creams from the 1940's acutally contain? So I went back to my research and found some basic cold cream recipes. I started experimenting and eventually came up with the base formula for my cold cream. (As a side note one of the main ingredients in cold cream was spemaceit which is kinda gross and no longer available so I replaced it with jojoba esters). At this point friends started to become interested and wanted to try out my handmade cold cream. But everyone's skin is different right? So I took my cold cream base and added different oils and hydrosols that would address different skin concerns and types and voila! My Rose, Lavender and Geranium cold creams were born :)

So this took care of my evening routine. I had made a cold cream that removed my makeup, cleansed my skin, was moisturizing but cleared up my acne. And I didn't have to splash my face with water when I was tired and ready for bed. All this with only one product. Now what to do in the morning? Cold creams are invariably heavy and somewhat greasy and so they are best used in the evening. So what did women use in the mornings? Back to my research....and this is when I found vanishing creams.