The Search for Marilyn Monroe's Lipstick!

I'm Erin Parsons I'm a makeup artist and I own Marilyn Monroe's lipstick it's true it's true now as a makeup artist and a vintage collector this is the Holy Grail I never thought in my wildest dreams that I could own something from Marilyn Monroe let alone her lipstick how is it possible to own something that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe 61 years after her death before I get into all of this my search was just to find Marilyn Monroe's products like what did she use which brand which shade which color I would see something come up at auction for instance a Revlon bachelor's Carnation lipstick and I would search for years to find that same exact product it took me a long time but now I own five of them so basically all I did was just try to find the exact replica of what she used this way I could piece together how she did her makeup because remember Marilyn Monroe she's a makeup icon she used Beauty she used lipstick to create a legendary look something that we all remember her for we all know her for that platinum blonde hair the beauty mark and of course the iconic red lip how do her items come up for auction all of these years later so Marilyn Monroe passed in 1962 and she left in her will most of her belongings to her acting Coach Lee Strasberg the Strasbourg passed away in 1982 and he left everything to his wife Anna Strasberg these items stayed in storage for 37 years I don't think anyone even knew that these items existed until 1999. the Christie's Auction dubbed sale of the century and this is the first time we see the iconic happy birthday dress now this became the most expensive dress ever sold at that time it went for 1 million 267 500 and then in 2016 it went for another record for 4.8 million dollars now I think we all know by now that this dress went to Ripley's Believe It or Not what you might not know is they also won her makeup case at that same auction for 266 500 and inside that makeup case it's the first time that we get to see the makeup products that Marilyn Monroe used but here's what's strange so we have the picture and the items that were in the case won by Ripley's the thing is the list it doesn't match what we see in the case so for instance we see her blush in this makeup case it's not listed we see five Elizabeth Arden Shadow sticks but only two or three are listed so where did all this other makeup go then in 2005 this lot sold at Julian's auctions containing 40 of her beauty items and and I recognize that blush that blush in that lot was the same exact one that they showed in the Christie's makeup kit so how did we come to have the makeup kit and then a whole nother 40 items of her makeup well she had two houses she had her apartment in New York City and she had a house in La when she passed I personally believe as a makeup obsessed person that she probably would have had a couple of makeup cases or a bag of makeup here and a case there I'm assuming that those items just stayed with Anna Strasbourg in storage until 2005. that's where the mystery starts for me in the makeup case sold at the Christie's Auction there are some Max Factor lipsticks and they are labeled ls722ni what the heck does that even mean and now seeing that 40 piece lot come up are these the same lipsticks is it the same exact color nothing's listed so far it just shows that it was 40 pieces were sold so the lipsticks look exactly the same but most of all what is ls722ni it looks to me sort of like a lab sticker like if someone were working on a cosmetic line they will send you a lipstick with a sticker on the bottom and that's the labs label all these years had passed I thought it's worth a shot to see if maybe this buyer will sell these products after all these years because sometimes when people buy Marilyn Monroe items they buy them as an investment it's almost like art and as you can see from the happy birthday dress it more than doubles in price so I reach out to the owner of Julian's auction Darren Julian and I say hey there is this lot that sold in 2005 for only nine thousand dollars would this person be willing to sell any of these items I said name your price I didn't know what that meant but you know let's see if we can get something out of this so I say name your price I don't hear anything back for a few weeks and then my friend Scott Fortner Marilyn Monroe collection who owns a lot of Maryland's makeup and dresses and and he's a total Maryland encyclopedia Scott reaches out to me and he says says they need a little bit of help at Julian's auction identifying some makeup products that belong to Maryland and this is when they show me what they think is a blue lipstick but of course I recognize that from the 1999 case that was sold these are Elizabeth Arden eyeshadow sticks they show me a few other products so I help identify a lip gloss a face slimming mask now I'm starting to understand that the person responded to Darren about this 40p slot but I didn't know how many items were actually going to be sold in it and also this is 2022. this is recent so I know some items are going to be sold but how many will we see some lipsticks I have to wait like everyone else until they announce the auction and show the catalog of products and sure enough every single piece all 40 items from this lot are going up for auction and you have to understand this buyer again as an investment they only paid 9 000 and it's very possible that every single one of these items could sell for 10 a piece give or take so from nine thousand to possibly four hundred thousand you did say that second two but first this lipstick this number still plaguing me I need to understand what is Max Factor ls722ni so I get a few Clues and it kind of all happens sort of around the same period it just starts to snowball and I start to learn more and more and the first clue comes from my friend Scott Fortner again and he told me that one of his friends owned a lip Pomade that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe now supposedly it was given to his friend from Evelyn Moriarty Evelyn was Marilyn Monroe's stand-in you can see her on set on The Misfits you can see her and something's got to give and the story is that Marilyn gave this to her again it's her stand-in she has the blonde hair as you can see so she gave her this lipstick and said wear this so we have the same exact shade so obviously when you're doing the stand and work we look similar we have the same coloring and when you look at this lip Pomade it says Max Factor on the top and when you turn it over 722 here we are again with this number 722 what the heck does it mean but we also get a glimpse of what the lipstick looks inside because so far we just have the picture from the case that sold in 1999 and the lipsticks look red we see the lip Pomade open and it looks orange it looks at least red orange I don't believe it and that's kind of what I start to say to myself like oh am I searching for like an orange red not a typical red lipstick this picture is starting to lead me down another path figuring out what the heck this LS 722 lipstick is I'm always buying vintage makeup so I'm searching eBay I'm searching Etsy I'm searching all the sites all the auctions anything that if a 722 would come up I don't think there's any way possible again because I'm thinking this is from the lab it could be the only ones ever created right I know Ripley's has her lipstick I live in New York but my friend another gorgeous blonde Darian darling she lives in La so I asked her will you go and check out the makeup case because there is one thing that I notice about these lipsticks and it's that they're the color fast formula for Max Factor which I believe launched in 1953 from the ads that I found why would Maryland have lipsticks in her case that were like nine years old I mean we're all guilty of using expired makeup but this is kind of crazy nine years old so I say can you please go check out slipstick get me some close-up pictures see if there's any other names because you can't see all the bottoms of the lipstick she goes in and she gets some pictures for me and you can see on the bottom of one of the lipsticks it says color fast but the name is sort of smudged off or worn off so I can't see the actual color so I start to think first theory is Marilyn had a lipstick from 1953 that she loved and she's Marilyn Monroe so she asked Max Factor hey can you make me this exact same lipstick hence the 722 label put them in the old color fast the packages the cases right so that's a theory that then my friend Darian tells me that the security guard there is kind of flirting with her and he says hey actually I have pictures of the lipstick open let me show you this moment blew me away this is the first time I see her lipstick up close it's open and what do I see I see an orange lipstick the color is orange right okay so I have three Clues because you know I collect is the replicas when I can find them so now maybe I can't find an ls22 because I've been searching for 10 years and I've never found it so now what I can look for is a color Fast Max Factor color fast see the name it's kind of smudged out but it kind of looks like it ends in a d or an e and if you see the ads you know like there was Rose Red so now I know what to look for and what not to look for and over the years I collected tons of color Fast Max Factor lipsticks they have the really old packaging updated packaging and it's a very particular look of this case I found so many of these lipsticks not once did I ever come across an orange red not even close to being a warm red even a lipstick called Golden Flame which I thought for sure and if you look at the name it's scratched out it could be Golden Flame right it should be a warm red it's not it's not if anything gets more just a a neutral red I never come across an orange red this is where I'm sort of stuck would you please give me a head I'm sort of stuck a couple years go by and there's someone on eBay who's kind of obsessed with Marilyn's makeup like I am so she sees some of my tick tocks my Instagram post and she reaches out this is pretty amazing because she tells me that there's a seller on Etsy who used to be a makeup artist he's from like the olden days of Hollywood he actually has a makeup artist kit and this makeup artist his name was Ben Lane so Ben Lane was the makeup director of RKO and he also worked on funny girl with Barbra Streisand and Annie he did a bunch of amazing films so we know this guy he's the real deal so he is selling all of these items on Etsy and he has some of the colors that Marilyn used to use like again a bachelor's Carnation from Revlon that was sold at auction so I reached out to him we become friends because he's super knowledgeable he loves the history of makeup and of course he has all these amazing vintage pieces so I'm buying a ton of stuff a couple weeks go by and I get to know him you know really well so I finally ask and I'm kind of scared to ask this question because if anybody knows the relation to Marilyn they're going to hike up the price if they have this object I didn't think he'd have it I didn't think I'd ever find this but I say do you have a Max Factor LS 722 and I lipstick I kid you not he had it he had the lipstick and he explained to me what this lipstick was what this label meant and here's what he said what he explained to me was that they would give these lipsticks to the makeup artist to use and test on the movies television celebrities and if the makeup artist gave great feedback and loved it they would actually put the color in production so it was sort of like a free marketing to the the makeup artist and Ben Lane he was a director of RKO pictures at that time and I believe Marilyn even worked on an RKO film so he probably worked with all of the Stars this makes a bit more sense if they're giving this lipstick to the makeup artist and Marilyn used it and she loved it maybe she said hey can I get like 10 tubes of that I love that color sure here you go very plausible Theory so one thing that plagues me about this lipstick is that the collar says 722 NIU of course Maryland's Just Say ni but what are the chances like 722 and I you like they must be the same thing right well I get the lipstick about a week later and lipstick color is orange now if this is not registering as orange on your screen that's where all of this complication is happening now because when he sent me a picture of this it looked like a red orange to me but it's pure orange so again the mystery deepens so all this time I've been searching for an orange red lipstick but should I be searching for an orange did Marilyn wear again we know she wore red lipstick we've seen the pictures right but you also see how that lipstick just registered on camera so the question is did Marilyn Monroe wear orange lipstick and the answer is yes she wore it a ton especially from the mid-1950s until 1962. so then I come across a bit more information now at that time Max Factor Jr and the legendary artist Dick Smith All of You special effects artists you might know who he is they were working under the Max Factor label and this was during the time that black and white television was becoming color television now if you know black and white television when it first started they did some pretty crazy makeup up techniques to make that register as a human flesh it was quite bizarre as you can see in the pictures and in color television they had the same problems these colors were not coming up as they appear in person so finally I come across a chart from Max Factor so this is during the time when of course the color television was coming in and colors were not showing up properly so they gave these charts to use certain products and one of the products for the lips was Mac Factor 722 okay it's starting to make sense and the time frame starting to make sense because they talked this is a 1956 57 58 when we're seeing like this color television but if we go back even further when Technicolor hit in the 1930s this is when they talk about how a lot of the movies would register how the lipsticks were then and what they had in the 1930s were indelible lipsticks so they would stain your lips this intense fuchsia pink pink color and one that's bad for continuity in the film industry you don't want something staining your lips if you have to shoot a different scene the next day so they produce these lipsticks that were unlike what was happening in the 30s they were just pigments that could easily be wiped off and they were warmer tones not the the pink that we saw because of course that would register almost blue and this can be confirmed because makeup artist Alan Whitey Snyder who was Marilyn Monroe's makeup artist had this to say from one of my all-time favorite books Marilyn Monroe metamorphosis like the Encyclopedia of Marilyn Monroe and there's some great pictures in here so in this you can read everything that Whitey has to say about how he did her makeup it's very thorough but it's the end here that's really interesting to me lipstick we used various colors as the industry changed we got down to normal colors at first we had a hell of a time with cinemascope no Reds photographed anything but Auburn we had to go light pink so that just goes to show you I mean you had cinemascope you had Technicolor you had Eastman color you had black and white television you also had color televisions they had to find a lipstick probably that would look good in all formats just to show you we have this picture it's from the same exact event you see her dress her hair her lipstick is red and in the same event this picture she's with Betty Grable and the lipstick is orange so what color was it all I'm seeing is orange now we know Maryland wore red lipstick but did any red lipsticks ever come up for auction a lot of her lipsticks did come up for auction but I have never personally seen a pure red color we have of course the bachelor's Carnation and that is like a fuchsia pink red we've got this one from Michael that looks sort of orange another Elizabeth Arden that's orange another Elizabeth Arden that is orange now this is interesting this Elizabeth Arden lipstick it was never opened it seems the lid was maybe stuck so we don't know what color that is inside could that be the iconic red that we're searching for this is what we see over and over again I continue to see the color orange so far I've never really seen a red lipstick come up other than this Westmore lip Pomade that came up for auction recently and I just so happened to have a lip Pomade very similar to the way that that one looked but what's interesting about this one is it's actually really sheer so it kind of almost goes on like like a lip balm in a way with a little bit of color so again to me it doesn't give me the iconic red so going back to my story when I had talked with Darren at Julian's auction now I know that there's going to be an auction happening with the 40 piece lot we know all 40 pieces are coming up inside that lot there are four seven two two lipsticks there was also of course the Pomade that I just showed you but I didn't want to go for the Pomade only because well I really wanted a lipstick and finally my dream to understand what this seven two two lipstick is was possibly going to become a reality so knowing that I'm gonna spend my life savings I asked to arrange a private viewing and I go and I see every single item that is coming up for auction and the reason I did that is because knowing how much this lipstick could go for well over twenty thousand dollars I have no ideas but what what I wanted to know was which lipsticks are you used which lipsticks are red I see that there's a pink lipstick but it looks like it's sort of been smashed with the cap and it was never actually used and you don't really see pink of course we hear what Whitey says about the light pink but you don't really see pink on her as much as you see orange or red so I dismissed the pink we also see a couple of what looks like white lipsticks these are actually highlighters I would love to have one of these but again my goal is the lipstick we also see the Pomade and I can see up close that there's actual like brush Strokes in it and you can see tons of pictures of Marilyn using a lip brush so I know this is this is definitely used by her so in total there are five 722 lipsticks one of them is sort of a pastel orange and again we see the color fast label on the bottom and the 722 not 722 and I this one is a little bit of a different color it's a little softer it's a little lighter and it does look to be used but there's four of the ls722ni the lipstick I've been been searching for now out of these four there are only two that are used I'm determined to get one that's used okay so here's my auction strategy my idea is that I'm going to bid on the first lipstick which is used this is lot 284. if I don't win that what I'll do is I'll drive up the price I have a budget of twenty thousand dollars I can't go over that so I will drive up the price and then whoever is bidding on it that's going to spend that amount of money maybe they'll go out and I'll I will also bid on an unused lipstick and hope to get a used one there's also the Last lipstick is used so I bid on the first lipstick now I'm also thinking maybe people will give up if I go high because they're like oh but there's a bunch more lipsticks after and that's what happened it went High it went really high but this is the one I wanted the most and I know what everybody wants to know how much did you pay for it because you know I won the lipstick but how much did I pay let's roll the clip so you can see [Music] a certificate 2015 35. over here 44 000 12 000 I got 45 1245. [Music] before you're getting five now six six thousand at five minutes six six thousand that'd be doing you're in it okay six thousand job of Julian's lives six thousand six thousand bits six and a half now seven thank you in the yard now eight and eight thousand which remains one of them and two thousand with you in his life Ten Thousand Nights it's a bit in the gallery asking ten thousand got it now 125 and the gallery about fifteen fifteen thousand fifteen thousand fifteen thousand fifteen thousand of Julian's life the midst in the gallery 12 5s and 15. 15 000 to Jillian's live going once contributes in fifteen thousand of Julian's life going to twice fifteen thousand fair warning to Jillian's lot and now so for 1200. so I won the lipstick in the end you pay a buyer's premium so in the auction it was twelve thousand five hundred but the final price was fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty five now this is under my estimate we I thought twenty thousand because some of her lipstick did go around eighteen thousand but I won the lipstick I wanted it was fifteen thousand dollars and I had a budget and that allowed me to get a few more items so I actually won her blush her eyeliner which she used as her beauty mark pencil you can see in this picture and I also won her lip gloss also you see I've done my research I bid on the items that I found in pictures and of course um her lipstick and her lashes and the lashes that's a great video on its own check out my Tick Tock see that video all very very interesting I have done my research as you can see now since I found pictures to prove the gloss and the eyeliner and I found a lot of information on the other products I wondered could I prove this lipstick and see it in pictures of Marilyn using it or holding it here's a couple pictures from bus stop and you can see again it's orange now it was red her lipstick was red in bus stop but in these pictures it's orange if we put up this color fast ad you can see that the bullet looks exactly like what's in these pictures and remember this is the color Fast Max Factor lipstick here she is this is in 1955 by the photographer Ed faringersh and she has the lipstick on the table and of course if you look at the lipstick at what I have and what was sold you can see that sort of indentation on the top so it looks like the exact same lipstick on the table and here's a picture of her actually using the lipstick let me open the lipstick and show you what it looks like inside because it actually looks like it could be this exact same one just judging by the shape or the other one that was sold at auction and what I haven't stressed to you is that the lipstick is orange it is pure orange again all this time I was looking for a red orange it is not red orange it is pure orange now it was my goal to dupe her color again I'm trying to learn exactly what these makeup techniques were and how she created it and now knowing that she was using an orange lipstick but I had a secret weapon I had the tester which we know is also Orange so I only bought of course one lipstick because I can use that 722 tester I don't have to touch my own lipstick I will never touch Marilyn's lipstick that is pure desecration it's sacrilegious her lipstick will be on display at a museum for Charity she will be preserved forever and her iconic makeup will be preserved but luckily I had this so I could just Swatch this and it's orange right it's the same exact color or so I thought here's the tester and here's Marilyn's lipstick you remember I said that you was going to plague me like that well it certainly did it's not the same color oh it's orange but it's more like a coral orange where Maryland's is like a pure orange so there's no way for me to Swatch this exact color the only way I could dupe this lipstick is literally just looking at it and setting it next to another lipstick I mean in hindsight had I known that they didn't match I maybe I would have bought one of the unused lipsticks I wouldn't feel so bad to maybe Swatch a bottom of an unused lipstick but maybe there will be another auction one day but until then I have Duke the lipstick just by looking at it and I've been wearing the dupe this entire time and it is revon siren this is the closest I could find just by eyesight so until one day I can actually Swatch a lipstick or some type of Technology allows me to get the exact color just from a picture I'll never know exactly what it is but this is definitely the closest so if you want Marilyn's iconic red lip try an orange lipstick now in the end what was 722 I believe again it was a lipstick that makeup artists used for like Max Factor junior said for the Technicolor films to get the right colors on the cinema the cinemascope the Eastman color the Technicolor so that's why I think she started wearing orange and perhaps she just fell in love with it perhaps she liked it with her coloring the mystery is solved because now I own Max Factor ls722ni Marilyn Monroe's orange lipstick thank you for watching if you stuck through this whole thing with me you're obviously a makeup history buff just like I am and you're awesome I I quite agree [Music]

Channel: Erin Parsons Makeup

Views: 1,339,343

Keywords: marilynmonroe, marilyn, monroe, vintage, vintagemakeup, virallipstick, maxfactor, ripleysbelieveitornot, marilynmonroeauction, redlipstick, revlon, orangelipstick, makeuphistory

Id: MGCF2aVN7Z4

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023