In a beauty obsessed world, thousands of products are hitting the shelves and being snapped up everyday making it easy to forget about the product that transforms the lashes, the mascara.

From BB creams to CC creams, women are distracted by new crazes, the mascara is one of the top products in a girls make up bag but it didn’t just drop down from the heavens, until the ninteenth century amazing lashes were a myth.

The product works magic, enhancing our natural lashes to look longer thicker and darker, the mascara was first created by a chemist named Eugene Rimmel using petroleum jelly. Rimmel translates to mascara in many foreign languages.

Around the same time in 1913 T.L Williams who was also a chemist created a similar substance for his sister Maybel.

This early mascara was made from coal dust mixed with Vaseline petroleum jelly. The product took off and Mabel and William sold the product through the mail in 1917.

His company Maybelline, a combination of his sister’s name and Vaseline, eventually became one of the worlds leading cosmetics companies.

The mascara was very messy and soon an alternative was developed, a dampened brush was rubbed against a cake containing soap and black dye and applied to the lashes.

The product was still messy until 1957 with an innovation by Helena Rubinstein.

Next time your thinking how great your lashes look or are deciding between a curling wand or a thickening brush – remember the history of the product, imagine a life with light short lashes, it would be tragic.