Beauty Sleuths - Meet The Women Spending Thousands On The World's Most Covetable Make-Up

Would you pay £25,000 for a lipstick? Would you fly to Paris for a single perfume? Would you buy an entire make-up range dedicated to Sharon Osbourne just because it’s MAC? For a covert community of beauty collectors you never knew about, it’s the norm. Self-appointed curators of vast collections of beauty products, these are the women taking payday hauls to the next level. Willing to cross continents, spend annual salaries and transform their homes into storage facilities, no length is too great when it comes to hunting down the next addition to their prized collection. Every spare moment is spent on the hunt, curating Google docs logging their purchases and responding to endless eBay notifications. These completists might look like any other beauty lover, but behind closed doors they’re collectively spending millions of pounds to acquire what they believe will be the antiques of the future.

‘Adrenaline-filled auctions, eBay trawls and schmoozing - there's no limit to what beauty sleuths will do.’

It's an underground movement that’s growing: 2016 saw one of Marilyn Monroe’s lipsticks sell at auction for a whopping $18,000, while this year a pair of Sharon Tate’s used false eyelashes was snapped up for more than $4,000. Why, you ask? Beauty products, whether associated with an A-lister or not, hold a romance and fascination that people are willing to pay for. But it’s not just about the money. Sleuthing out an original 1955 Dior Crystal Obelisk lipstick holder in mint condition requires an almost athletic level of competitiveness and commitment. As vintage make-up dealer, Linda Bee, puts it, ‘People like to own things no one else owns.’ Add the intangible emotional attachment that beauty products wield over us and you have a potent driving force for amassing some of the most impressive collections in the world.

From month-long eBay trawls to adrenaline-filled auctions and schmoozing fellow collectors on Twitter, there’s seemingly no limit to what beauty sleuths are willing to do for their next hit. ‘I have alerts for eBay auctions going off on my phone daily,’ says make-up artist Lisa Eldridge, who uses white handling gloves to open endless white drawers, each carefully filled with dozens of rare beauty artefacts.

We’re nestled in her North London studio, just off the main Camden strip, where towers of carboard boxes overflowing with vintage make-up are yet to be unpacked. ‘It’s already full and we’ve only just moved in!’, she says. Lisa has amassed a collection of vintage make-up that spans 700 AD (an ancient Chinese powder compact) through to the present day. 'I keep an eye out for anything that might be a future icon, but I hate vintage-inspired packaging – I want to collect pioneers of each era, not pastiche’, she says. The coveted collection inspired her debut book Face Paint: The Story Of Makeup and often appears in exhibitions at the V&A, where they have a lot more storage space than Lisa does.

Like Lisa, perfume obsessive Tamara Clegg has collecting in her bones. ‘I never wanted toys or sweets as a child, I only ever wanted perfume,’ she explains. ‘When I was six, my mum took me to a department store and she bought me this teeny tiny purple bottle of Berdoues Violette with an atomiser. It was my first bottle of perfume and I’ve still got it now.’ Three decades, 500 bottles and almost half a million Australian dollars later, Tamara has curated what amounts to a personal perfume museum in her own home. ‘I always wore perfume, but the collection really got going in my forties when I had the money to commit to it. Back then I had a rule – you don’t buy it if you can’t afford the rent! Now, there’s a glass cabinet in every room. My husband is very patient.’

'500 bottles and almost half a million Australian dollars later, Tamara has her own perfume museum.'

For the rest of us, simply adding the odd lipstick to our collection of homogenous nudes satisfies our fleeting desire for novelty. But what drives someone to sacrifice years of their life, not to mention social and financial commitments, in search of a beauty product? ‘There was a phase where my compulsive need to have everything overtook whether I actually liked what I was buying,’ says Emily Cook, an ex-collector of MAC Cosmetics. Most Noughties teenagers spent their pocket money on misguided bottles of WKD, Miss Sixty jeans and magazines, but before Emily had turned 18 she’d spent almost £5,000 on amassing a MAC make-up collection to rival any department store counter.

‘In 2011, I counted my lipsticks and they totalled over 160. That was when I was really in the fog of it.’ An electric pink Barbie-themed lipstick kicked off Emily’s MAC collection, ‘I must have been 12 at the time. I went to the MAC counter in Leeds every weekend for a month to try and squeeze a launch date out of the staff. Back then MAC swore their employees to secrecy. I’ve never even used it. It’s the Oscar of my collection.’

Years spent swarming new-drop hashtags, queueing for hours in online waiting rooms and buying up everything from Marilyn Monroe lipsticks to Hello Kitty highlighters, and Emily was a fully-fledged MAC community member. The initial stash of lipsticks had morphed into a mass of over 350 sought-after ‘essentials’. ‘I wasn’t a sporty teenager at all, so this was the one I time I was competitive and I had to win. It was like getting Glastonbury tickets – the anticipation of waiting and the rush of knowing you got it.’ The peak of Emily’s collecting coincided with the release of a new Rihanna collaboration, specifically a twist on the brand’s classic red shade, ‘Riri Woo’.

‘I actually left an A level exam to buy it. You were only allowed one per person so I ordered it four times under different names. It’s still my favourite red lipstick but I’ve never even used three of them.’ For the lucky few products that do get opened, application is done with military precision. ‘The trick is to get a tiny lipstick brush and sweep it up the sides so you don’t ruin the imprinted design.’

‘There was a phase where my compulsive need to have everything overtook whether I actually liked what I was buying.'

For make-up artist Lisa, it all started in her mother’s bedroom. ‘I remember being six and her make-up box was full of 1960s make-up – I was fascinated. I would watch her apply vivid yellow and orange Biba eyeshadows and in 1992 I saw it all for sale at Portobello Market. Biba had gone bust years before that so when I saw it on the stall I thought, “This is going to be iconic.” After that I was always on the lookout.’ Twenty years of avid collecting doesn’t come cheap. ‘I've got hundreds and hundreds of pieces, if not thousands. I’ve never dared to tally it all up but I’ve probably spent more than £100,000.’

Having worked for the government and then in mining, collecting perfume became Tamara’s escape into a world without politics or hard hats. ‘For me, it’s all about the romance. It can be the most amazing-smelling perfume, but if it’s in an ugly bottle, I don’t want it. It’s that 1920s glamour that I love – something to display rather than use.’ A love affair Tamara is willing to fly half way across the world for. ‘I’ve got a dealer in Paris who sources me rare bottles from my wish list. There was a bottle by Lalique for Coty called Cyclamen that I wanted for ages – it has these beautiful green dragonfly wings. I saw it on eBay but it was too expensive, then I saw it in London but it had already sold. I was crushed. My dealer, Benjamin, finally found it for me. It cost $6,000 AUD and I bought two.’

When you’re spending more on a bottle of perfume than a new car, how do you avoid the inevitable fakes and forgeries? ‘Always do your research,’ advises antique compact expert Gillian Horsup. ‘Join a forum or Facebook group that specialises in what you want to collect, then Google an original picture of the item. That way you can compare the listing and check it’s got the correct sticker, engraving, lid, and so on.’ But it’s not always that easy. When it comes to fake make-up, it’s the Wild West out there. ‘There’s no regulation online,’ explains Emily. ‘I remember finding a MAC Marilyn Monroe eyeliner that looked so real – identical to the rest of the collection. The only way I knew it was fake was because I knew the range didn’t include an eyeliner.’

Ultimately, it’s all about the thrill of getting your hands on the long lusted-after product that will fill the gap in your collection. ‘I ended up at an auction for these Revlon Couturines lipsticks from the 1960s that look like dolls. I was obsessed with collecting them all, but the prices just went through the roof. I still don’t have the full set,’ says Lisa. But for every defeat, there is a victory. She carefully unwraps a bundle of kitchen roll and bubble wrap to reveal what appears to be a golden bird. It’s a rare 1950s example of a lipstick and powder compact designed by Salvador Dalí, appropriately dubbed Bird In Hand. ‘People go nuts for them because Marlene Dietrich had one,' she says. 'I researched for ages until I found one in mint condition.’

'My Audrey Hepburn lipstick was a splurge. I got carried away and bid higher than I mean to.'

But, the real jewel in Lisa’s collection is a more recent addition: the famous gold and sapphire Cartier lipstick holder made for, and owned by, the original beauty icon: Audrey Hepburn. Only one exists in the world. ‘That was a surprise splurge, I got a bit carried away and bid higher than I meant to.’ The price the hammer fell on? According to Christies, £56,250. ‘There was definitely a thrill when it turned up and I had that connection with it. The first night I slept with it under my pillow. Now it lives in a safe, which sort of takes the fun out of it. I often wonder, “If I gave it all up tomorrow, what would I do with it?” but I’m definitely not ready to do that yet.’

Equally, for an experienced collector such as Tamara, only the best will do. ‘I won’t accept anything with scratches, it has to be 99-100% perfect. I’m a purist. I want the bottle full of perfume or not at all.’ When you’ve got a home overflowing with perfume, you can afford to be choosy. ‘Now, I only want the unicorn bottles. If it’s really hard to find, I want it. I had a rare unopened bottle of Chanel No46 that was discontinued in 1946, but it looked like all the other Chanel perfumes so I gave it to a friend for his birthday.’ It may be a privileged position to be in, but Tamara’s aspirations for the collection are anything but lofty. ‘I don’t have any children, so I’ll probably end up selling it all off and donating the money to my local cat shelter. I love animals, but not quite as much as perfume.’

For habitual collectors, there’s always the next prize. So how do you know when to stop? By the time she turned 20, Emily’s collection had reached saturation point. ‘I got an internship in New York which meant I needed money. I had this Marie Kondo moment and just thought “This is ridiculous”. So I sold half of it.’ One Depop account later and her MAC collection was turning into money. ‘I had over 5,000 followers at one point which was a bit insane. People would message me about specific limited-edition products and make me an offer. I became a sort of antique MAC shopkeeper. I must have made over £3,000.’ A lot of money, but still not quite enough to turn a profit. Eight years on, does she miss her MAC? ‘It was fun, but it was stressful as well. Now I’ve got proper stresses in my life, I don’t need to add to them!’