How did we get here?
If you’ve found yourself wondering at any point during the last few years why so many of our trends are named after foods, you aren’t the only one. Teen Vogue posed the question: "Who is a tomato girl?” Why are we conducting internet searches for “glazed doughnut” skincare routines at the witching hour? And aside from how fleeting they are in nature, what do these trends have in common?
In often romanticized descriptions, they’re all named after food. Most lip products smell like some concoction of cake batter or vanilla, and our powder cosmetics are often scented the same. For much of history, our cosmetics and personal care products contained ingredients that were good enough to eat (except in those cases where they contained lead and arsenic). So, the evolution from preparations like these to today’s modern products that are scented, flavored or otherwise food-themed isn’t entirely devoid of sense.
Let’s take a look at that evolution, shall we?
Ancient Egypt
One Cosmopolitan article describes how the ancient Egyptians crafted kyphi, a fragrance, from ingredients such as flowers, honey, wine and berries. The article also details the use of cucumber juice to reduce the appearance of freckles and crocodile fat to soften wrinkles. Cleopatra, who famously bathed in milk and honey, also wore eyeliner made from burnt almonds and ash.Victorian & Edwardian Eras
Published in 1832, the “Toilette of Health, Beauty and Fashion” details countless recipes for homemade personal care products, many of which contained several of the same ingredients used in ancient Egyptian cosmetic formulations, including almond oil, flowers and cucumber water, to name a few. These recipes swapped crocodile fat for that of suet from sheep or deer. One recipe for a “scarlet lip salve” from the book calls for butter, beeswax and black grapes, which gave the salve its color.The 1930s and 1960s
In 2016, Makeup Museum shared a blog post on this very topic, including scanned photos and advertisements. One of them showed a group of women testing fruit and beverage-flavored lipsticks that was printed in a May 1939 issue of Popular Science, as well as an advertisement for Cutex’s “Forbidden Fruits’’ line of lipsticks which were released decades later in the 1960s. Cutex claimed in that advertisement that theirs was the very first flavored lipstick, despite evidence to the contrary.1970s Avon
Avon is one brand that never seemed to shy away from novelty. Does anyone else remember the compact it released in the shape of a sunny-side-up egg? If not, it was a little egg-shaped compact that housed two lip gloss pans released in the 1970s. That same decade, it released a collection of three lipsticks called “Lip Pops” in packaging resembling that of Coca-Cola bottles, along with two lip glosses sold in hamburger-shaped packaging.1975: Bonne Bell’s Lip Smackers x Dr Pepper
Often regarded as one of the first partnerships between a food and beverage brand and a makeup or personal care company is Bonne Bell’s Lip Smackers collaboration with Dr Pepper in 1975, when it released its iconic soda-flavored lip balm. According to the Makeup Museum, by 2012, Lip Smackers had offered 400 flavors, including 7-up, Tootsie Roll and Bit-O-Honey.Early 2000s: Urban Decay’s Sparkling Lickable Body Powders
Sold in honey, marshmallow, cinnamon and more were these now-discontinued “edible” body shimmers by Urban Decay. Some of us may or may not have gone to Sephora in the seventh grade solely to try on the samples just to eat them (likely altering our brain chemistry for the worse), but that's something we know nothing at all about.@laura.evans95 1970s Avon Lip Pop ❤️ More vintage Avon!! I have these Lip Pops in the shades/flavors Cherry and Strawberry. The packaging says they added no color to the lips so they would’ve been more of a balm. Unfortunately the gold tube on one of them is stuck in the lid so that’s why the tube looks white on that one. Such a fun product! Very reminiscent of some 90s lip balms 🥰 #makeup #vintagemakeup #vintage #avon #vintageavon #history #makeuphistory #beautyhistory #vintagemakeup ♬ Got to Be Real (US Single Version) - Cheryl Lynn
2020: TikTok and Related Beauty Trends
Last summer, popular commentary YouTuber and video essayist Jordan Theresa described such trends as “manufactured,” and “essentially repackaged trends into sort of romanticized names or even aesthetics but they are sold to you as something new and exciting.” She asked, for example, are they “blueberry milk” nails, or are they just light blue?Taste Beauty
Taste Beauty, a cruelty-free makeup brand founded in 2015, is, like Avon, no stranger to novelty. Its offerings consist almost entirely of brand collaborations from Doritos and Hot Cheetos to Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Fruity Pebbles. Upon the release of Netflix’s Stranger Things fourth season, the brand unveiled a themed collection including a pineapple-flavored lip gloss packaged neatly inside of a compact Surfer Boy Pizza box resemblant of that in the show.e.l.f. x Chipotle and Dunkin’
In 2021, e.l.f. collaborated with Chipotle on a small collection that included an eyeshadow palette (that came with a voucher for free chips and guac), a makeup sponge shaped like an avocado and a red lip lacquer inspired by the hottest salsa Chipotle offers. In 2022, it released a collection with Dunkin’ that included a coffee lip scrub and an eyeshadow palette with a dozen shades, each inspired by doughnuts. The brand has also released a cookies and cream collection inspired by the flavor, as well as one inspired by mint chocolate chip.Girl Scout Cookie Everything
It’s been an oddly big couple of years for the Girl Scouts with collections by Hipdot, Native and most recently, Hard Candy. We wrote about Native's collection back in January, which included deodorant, body wash, body sprays and shampoo and conditioner inspired by the cookies. In 2022, Hipdot released a collection with three eyeshadow palettes and lipsticks inspired by the same. Hard Candy’s collection, the latest, includes a few different sets of press-on nails, all affectionately named after the “Girl Scout Handshake.” It also features three lip treatment oils and three eyeshadow palettes, each inspired by an iconic cookie and, of course, flavored and scented accordingly. Nails.Inc
London-based Nails.Inc fancies itself a food-related collection, with former collections being inspired by Froot Loops, White Claw, Cheez-it, Velveeta (which was scented) and Magnum Ice Cream, to name a few. Most recently, the brand worked on a collection with McDonald’s. Thea Greene, the brand’s founder, said in an Instagram reel that her favorite from the collection is one of the sets of press-on nails called “I speak French,” which is like a classic French manicure, just with little french fry stickers. Through TikTok and the rise of aesthetics (like “cottagecore,” for example) that we used to escape the pandemic — and to be honest, probably still do — something as simple as blush and faux freckles are spun into a wistful narrative about a “tomato girl,” who isn’t wearing blush but is naturally flushed and freckled from the sun, lives a slow life on the Amalfi coast, spends her mornings reading in her garden of lemon trees and doesn’t have the same problems we do.
Without having to say much, brands can co-opt the names or aesthetics of these trends (that they likely didn’t come up with) because their names alone are sensuous and aspirational enough, and by the end, most of the work’s done for them. One major critique of these trends, which rise to popularity in a flash and disappear just as quickly, as well as limited edition novelty collections like those mentioned here, is that they may contribute to overconsumption.
Reflex Group calls all of this “nostalgia marketing,” and claims, like Theresa, that these “new” trends aren’t all that new. They can be comforting, though. Both taste and smell are inextricably linked to our memories, and brands invoking one or both, especially when it comes to something we loved as children, is a powerful marketing tool that's surely here to stay—as well as the reason we had to crack open our last box of Samoas just while writing this.
