Hazel Brown

Long-lasting lipstick was one of the first modern cosmetics of its kind, one that took advantage of advances in chemistry and was designed with improved customer experience in mind. The product was the brainchild of entrepreneur, inventor and chemist Hazel Gladys Bishop, who demonstrated throughout her life that an exceptional combination of persistence, resilience and intelligence makes success possible in a variety of fields. For generations, women put up with lipsticks that smeared. In the 1940s Hazel Bishop decided enough with lipstick that did not last. Working by day for a chemical company, at night she conducted lipstick-making experiments in her mother’s kitchen. After more than 300 attempts, Bishop successfully created a smear-proof lipstick. Her invention was a smash success leaving a great impact in the cosmetic industry. Today, cosmetics constitute a multi-billion dollar chemical industry.

Hazel Bishop was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on August 17, 1906. After attending Barnard and graduating in May 1929, she planned to go to medical school but The Great Depression intervened. Anxious to stay in school, she went to work for a well-known dermatologist and syphilologist, A. B. Cannon, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. While working in his laboratory, she took classes in biochemistry and also helped him create the Almay line of hypoallergenic cosmetics. Bishop then worked as an organic chemist, first for Standard Oil Development Company, during World War II, and then for Socony Vacuum Oil, until 1949. Inspired by Cannon's work, Bishop experimented with lipstick recipes in her mother's kitchen-cum-laboratory in the late 1940s. She ultimately succeeded in creating a lipstick "guaranteed not to come off on cigarette butts, glasses, or him." Also she thought that the smudge proof, long-lasting lipstick that wouldn’t come off on coffee cups, shirtsleeves, this was something the professional woman needed and would appreciate. Bishop added other distinctive qualities to her lipsticks. The names of her lipsticks were simple color descriptions, such as “Dark Red”, instead of fancy names used by other manufacturers like “Passionate Pink.”

Bishop’s product was ready to be launched in 1949. In 1950, Bishop brought her product to market by starting Hazel Bishop, Inc. Her lipsticks were extremely successful on the market, and the company took off. She enlisted the help of advertising pro Raymond Spector to help her launch the product in exchange for stock in her company. He helped her form the idea of calling it "kissable" lipstick, an idea that proved successful: Bishop's Long-Lasting Lipstick was an immediate success and rival cosmetics companies soon followed her lead with copycat products. By 1953, the product was making Hazel Bishop, Inc. more than $10 million per year. Unfortunately, Bishop had brought in other investors at the company's