#victory red

[gleafer]

Nazis didn’t like women wearing red lipstick.

And since we’re being forced to relive history, let’s do it in style! Victory Red 1941 (which also happens to be my favorite Good Omens flashback era!)

[lovewhimsy]

Vintage lipstick advertisment made in 1941

[traditionaldream]

I wear red lipstick in an old Hollywood, vintage style, 40s-80s, patriotic way not in a raging communist, angry feminist way

[blakelysco-pilot]

A Val question! Does she keep using Victory Red, after the war, or does she choose another shade with fewer memories attached?

The short answer… is no, she doesn’t stop wearing it.

The long answer is, Val has been wearing that color since before it was marketed as Victory Red for the war. Back when Elizabeth Arden sold it under the name Montezuma Red in the 1930s- that’s always been her color. So, there’s a lot of good memories attached to that color, far more than the bad.

Red is Our Gal Val’s trademark, from her lipstick to her nail varnish. Plus, it’s Ev’s favorite (even if it wasn’t she’d still wear it because it’s her favorite). You won’t catch her in any other color; it’s Victory Red until the day the color itself (even if by another name) is not made anymore.

[floridianfireflyfaith]

My mind is heckin' blown. My great-grandmother, for as long as I knew her well into her 90s, always had to have a tube of red lipstick. Always got her one at Christmas along with her other stuff. It was iconically Nanny.

TIL that red lipstick was a direct act of defiance against Hitler during WWII. He hated the stuff and prohibited it and thus the shade "Victory Red" was created and enlisted to the military women of the US.

I think I get now why Nanny loved her red lipstick. She was raising two girls when all of that went down and that is EXACTLY the kind of shade she always wore.

[giiiinabaker]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bésame Cosmetics (@besamecosmetics)

If you know me at all, you know that vintage makes my heart happy. And if you’ve been following along with my story Eight to The Bar, you know that Victory Red is mentioned a number of times as a staple in OC Valencia DiRosano’s makeup bag (and on occasion, left in kisses across Ev Blakely’s face and neck😉) so, when Besame Cosmetics released a special edition of their popular Victory Red, you know I picked up two.

Victory Red was created during WWII and was based on Elizabeth Arden’s Montezuma Red as a color specifically for women in the armed forces on the frontlines and for women supporting the war effort at home and in the factories.

The special edition set comes with one lipstick and the replica V for Victory pin from 1941. The color screams of patriotism and Women in Wartime. It’s stunning, and if you can, I highly recommend picking one up for yourself if red is your shade 😘

[nocternalrandomness]

”All-American Stars and Stripes Victory Girl”

[patcaps]

Victory Red | Prologue/Teaser

Synopsis: The red string of fate (or pure coincidence) draws young Cubs Leader, Pat, to Button House one year. There she’s able to see and hear one ghost and one ghost only: the Captain. Each summer camp after that, Pat returns with her troop - and the Captain falls slowly but helplessly in love. In the middle of the Captain’s war with her identity and her feelings for Pat - married mother Pat who is definitely straight and still very much alive - there’s an accident on the archery range. With both their paths merged together suddenly and permanently, can feelings stay buried forever?

[Listen to the Victory Red playlist on Spotify]

Prologue (Teaser)

Every year, the Captain waited for summer. She loved the smell of the cut grass, the explosion of wildflowers, the sun on the lake, but she loved something else the most: the sound of a familiar Northern accent filling the field beyond her window like birdsong. She couldn’t mark the date on a calendar but her internal clock was as good as the day she died; she could anticipate Pat’s arrival as easily as a rainstorm.

What a similar force of nature Pat was, too. A sunny disposition bursting behind nutmeg freckles and sky blue eyes. Her laugh seemed to carry for miles and her attitude was infectious, inspiring the Captain for the length of each stay to hold her head a little higher too. There was always a spring in her step with Pat around.

It was the fourth year that Pat had brought her patrol for a weekend of camping and activities, and she had been the definitive highlight of the previous three. Her Cub Scouts hung on every word Pat said the way that they always did and the Captain felt similarly, so hooked on her voice that she sat for hours at the edge of the field to simply watch and listen. She was impressive, enamouring, and bright. She was also so very alive.

The most painful part of all, however, was that Pat could see her all the same.

It didn’t stop there. After the sun would set and the boys were safely in their tents, they would sit by the lake for hours - hours that went by much too fast - talking like there wasn’t a whole plane of existence separating them. Each year that they learned a little more about the other, the Captain was pulled deeper into her orbit. It was as though she shone the brightest when Pat was there, encapsulated, and Pat slipped beneath her skin before she could stop it.

The way Pat made her feel evaded understanding, it refused to be named, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter when the Captain learned about Pat’s husband and her son and their semi-detached house in Yorkshire, or when Pat learned that the Captain had served in the war, that her tunic and skirt weren’t a costume after all but real. It didn’t matter when Pat laughed and said how strange it was that one of her best friends was a ghost. She tried so hard not to let it sting.

It began to matter more, hurtling into clearer view, when Pat arrived the third year and confessed to her that she’d thought she had seen the odd ghost as a child. She’d chalked it up to an overactive imagination, nothing but make-believe, until the day they had met right there on the grounds of the old country estate.

Pat arrived that first year like a cool breeze one humid morning at Button House. It was much too early for any of the other ghosts but the Captain was already on her regular jog when she heard the sound of a bus engine. She swiftly abandoned the rest of her route, gripped with curiosity.

It soon gave way to a unique affliction upon seeing Pat for the first time, her dark brown mullet and gold-rimmed glasses catching in the early light. It was a confusing squeeze of the chest that made her want to hide, yet also a bubbling giddiness she hadn’t felt for a very, very long time. 

The Captain watched as Pat led her boys in setting up their campsite and for a while, the Captain went unnoticed. She assumed it would remain that way, always an unseen ghost or a cold spot to the living; incorporeal. So when Pat’s head suddenly snapped up and their eyes met across the small stretch of grass between them, the Captain felt her whole world turn on its axis.