Tangee Lipstick Review
When's the last time you treated yourself to a new tube of lipstick? Many economists and social scientists have noticed a trend dating back to the Great Depression that during tough economic times, cosmetic sales tend to increase. The explanations for this noteworthy phenomenon range from insightful to outright fanciful, but generally it is believed women strapped for cash will splurge on a new shade for their lips rather than more expensive items like a new dress.
At almost $15 a tube, I wouldn't say Tangee is the cheapest lipstick around, but given the brand has been around for almost a century, its formula virtually unchanged during that time, I thought a vintage-loving gal like me should pick up a tube, regardless of the state of the economy.
Tangee's fame lies in its unusual color-changing characteristic, hence the motto "The Lipstick That Changes Color to Become Uniquely Your Own". In short, this vibrant orange gloss-like lipstick turns an elegant shade of red with a hint of purple within seconds of applying it to your lips.
How does this happen?
Well, the website Cosmetics and Skin explains how the synthetic dyeeosin discovered in the late nineteenth century was added to Tangee and other lipsticks of the early twentieth century to create a new type of "indelible" color, that is, color that cannot be rubbed of the lips easily.
The mechanism responsible for this attribute was fundamentally different from how other lipsticks colored the lips. Traditional lipsticks contained pigments are already present and active even before the product touches the skin. In the case of Tangee and other "indelible" lipsticks, the eosin dye reacts with your skin's proteins to create a vibrant reddish color with the slightest hint of purple.
Thus Tangee technically falls under the category of lip stain as opposed to true lipstick. (Incidentally eosin is still used for staining tissue samples in laboratories....)
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| A smear of Tangee lipstick on my hand produces this pleasant reddish shade |
So how does it become "Uniquely Your Own"? I'm not sure it does. Some say it reacts to the temperature or pH of your skin, but I've yet to see a scientific explanation for either of those claims. I'm not sure given the nature of eosin how this reaction could produce a different color on different people, unless you take into account the different underlying skin tones.
