The Man Behind Maybelline and the Rise of Modern Makeup

On this episode of Our American Stories, in Victorian America, makeup was taboo. Respectable women didn’t enhance their eyes—unless they were silent film stars or prostitutes. That changed with one family experiment that quietly sparked a beauty revolution. At just 19, Thomas Lyle Williams created what would become Maybelline, inspired by his sister’s homemade eyelash treatments. Mixed in teapots and sold by mail, the product became so popular that the family once hauled orders from the post office by wheelbarrow.

Sharrie Williams, a member of the founding family and author of The Maybelline Story, tells the inside story of how a homemade beauty aid became a global brand—and how changing one small cultural rule helped change everything.

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