Stories from the history and science of cosmetics, skin-care and early Beauty Culture.

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Boncilla

Starting out as Crown Chemical selling washing powder, the company changed its name to Boncilla Laboratories in 1920 after it began making and selling cosmetics.

V. Vivaudou

The history of the V. Vivaudou company founded by Victor Vivaudou in New York in 1914.

Tokalon

Tokalon started out as the To-Kalon Manufacturing Company, a business established by E. Virgil Neal in Syracuse, New York State in 1907.

Tokalon (post 1930)

By 1930, E. Virgil Neal had settled in Nice, France and had stopped selling Tokalon in the American market.

F. W. Hampshire

F. W. Hampshire produced a wide variety of products including the Snowfire range of toiletries and cosmetics.

Goya started out as a perfume brand founded by Douglas Collins in Brighton, England in 1937. Realising that Brighton was not particularly fashionable he also registered a London postal address at 4 Whitehorse Street, Piccadilly.

Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour was founded in 1933 with a salon opened at 23 Woodstock Street, off Bond Street, in Mayfair, London. It quickly expanded across Britain as well as parts of the British Empire, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.