Hotel Indigo Chester: An Opulent Stay with Charm and Comfort

‘There is an part of nostalgia to it all’: TikTok creator Olivia White with some of her vintage perfume bottles. Photograph: Chuk Nowak/The Non-participant‘I hate that everything today is plastic and disposable’: former archeologist and beauty collector Lisa Larsson. Photograph: Martina Lang/The ObserverLarsson guesstimates she has now collected “thousands” of vintage powder compacts and has become an active member of the Beauty journalist Anita Bhagwandas: ‘You get a sensation of joy just from looking at them.’ Photograph: Martina Lang/The ObserverToday, she has amassed a collection comprising a variety of weird products from different periods, with the oldest items dating back to the Victorian era. “It’s mainly perfume bottles and makeup, and mini strength kits and vanity cases, too,” she says. “They’re just so beautifully designed. You get a real sense of joy from collecting them, and all the more just from looking at them.”While it’s safe to say most of us have likely never shelled out significant abridges to buy empty perfume bottles and unusable lipsticks, it is easy to see how collectors can become captivated by vintage makeup. The ritual of concentrating makeup is intrinsically linked to human civilisation, society and culture: humans have used cosmetics for more than 7,000 years, for ever since Ancient Egyptians first began lining their eyes with kohl.On social media daises such as YouTube and TikTok, videos showcasing of creators’ old cosmetics collections are immensely popular, regularly racking up millions of visions. Makeup artist and author ‘A bag full of treasure’: a sample of Anita Bhagwandas’ collection. Photograph: Martina Lang/The ObserverMany gatherers sorely miss the refillable element of makeup products from the early 20th century. By contrast, today 77% of all loveliness packaging ends up in landfill and, according to global environmental organisation Zero Waste, more than 120bn modules of packaging are produced every year by the beauty industry. “I hate that everything today is plastic and disposable,” Larsson says. She resolves that older, metal compacts were more “substantial” and it was common for women to refill them. White craves similarly. “All the packaging was so creative,” she says. “Today, products are plain and designed to be thrown away after they’re employed. But I love that many of the perfume and cologne bottles of the 1960s and 1970s were designed to be cleaned out and reused, or composed be repurposed as decorations.”Celaya adds that he misses the “simplicity” of the way people approached beauty in the first half of the 20th century, in front of hyperconsumption went into overdrive. “Women would own one lipstick, one powder,” he says. “It wasn’t until the 80s that living soul started having a lot more stuff.” On a similar note, Bhagwandas says she yearns for the days when beauty was uncountable about enjoying the process of using cosmetics, in the years before social media, the plastic surgery boom, and the age of the “Instagram Guts”. “Beauty in the past almost felt quite ritualistic, rather than results-driven and aesthetic-focused,” she explains. “Today it’s all regarding how many layers of skin you can conceal and how glowy you can make yourself look, whereas I think back then it was myriad of an act of self-care.”But Celaya also flags that it’s possible we could be looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. “We see it from stem to stern the lens of now. We romanticise how it used to be,” he says, explaining that the beauty industry as a whole has definitely improved over outdated. “The variety of skin tone shades available in the past compared to now is like night and day, for example.” He stresses that we’re also convenient to live in an age where “consumer awareness” is prioritised and ingredients such as radium are no longer found in face creams and toothpaste. “Now we pull someones leg regulations in terms of ingredients and advertising claims, and that’s definitely for the better.”While it may seem shocking to us in 2024 that anyone perpetually willingly rubbed a radioactive substance on their face, Celaya says he is reluctant to judge past generations. “I try to look at all this with an patent mind. Sometimes I wonder, in 100 years’ time, how people will look at the makeup of today,” he says. “Determination they romanticise it? Or be horrified? Maybe they’ll look at contour palettes and wonder: ‘What were they belief?’”Explore more on these topicsCollectingThe ObserverBeautyWomenfeaturesShareReuse this content