Lisa Eldridge explores her favourite era for makeup. This is the moment when modern makeup as we know it arrived in women’s handbags, and it is no coincidence that it appeared at a moment of huge change in British society.

WWI and the global flu pandemic were over. Women were entering the work-force and could now make choices about how they wanted to look and how they spent their money. The flappers cut their hair and put on red lipstick. Lisa explores how, although starting as a shocking look for the few, moved in less than two decades through the pages of magazines and into beauty counters on every high street.

This was the era when Hollywood films, with all their beauty and glamour, first arrived on our shores, and everyone wanted to look like their favourite star. Lisa visits the British Film Institute archives to find out about the impact of cinema on the development of some of our favourite makeup products.

She works with of pharmacist Szu Shen Wong to recreate some of the authentic recipes for foundation, eye makeup and lipstick from the era to try out on herself and on our 21st-century model.

Lisa takes us on a journey across the years when makeup turned from something shocking to a near-requirement among women everywhere. Show less