15 Vintage Photos of Exceedingly Strange Beauty Treatments from the Past
A trip to an old beauty salon could involve wires dangling from the ceiling, rubber strapped across your face, or a metal frame pressed against your cheeks. Beauty manuals offered advice on smoothing wrinkles with adhesive plaster, while inventors built gadgets to measure facial proportions or create dimples on demand. Some treatments promised results that sound suspicious even on paper. Others were ordinary appointments involving equipment elaborate enough to stop a customer in their tracks. The photographs are the best part: women smiling inside metal contraptions, entire rows of customers under towering dryers, and a few remarkably hands-on facial treatments. Here are 15 vintage photos of beauty routines that got wonderfully strange.
Dimples on Demand
A woman demonstrates Isabelle Gilbert’s 1936 Dimple-Maker, a wire frame fitted with two small presses positioned against her cheeks.
The Rubber Mask Treatment
Two women wear fitted rubber beauty masks intended to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and blemishes, with most of their faces covered.
Plug-In Skincare
A salon worker tends to a seated client wearing a thick electric face mask in this 1939 Los Angeles photograph.
Max Factor’s Head Cage
Max Factor demonstrates his beauty micrometer in a 1935 photograph, with an elaborate metal framework positioned around a model’s head.
Curls Under Construction
Hairdresser Eugene Suter works with an early permanent-wave machine in this 1920 photograph, using equipment designed by Isidoro Calvete.
The “Wireless” Perm
A 1934 Icall photograph shows a woman seated beneath a circular machine, with numerous curling attachments suspended around her head on long cords.
Wrinkles Meet Adhesive Plaster
A woman presses adhesive plaster against the side of her forehead in a wrinkle-treatment demonstration published in a 1910 beauty manual.
Freckle Removal Gets Complicated
A woman undergoing freckle removal in 1937 wears circular eye shields with metal rods extending around her head.
The Eyelid Workout
A woman closes her eyes and presses her fingertips against her eyelids while demonstrating a massage technique in a 1910 beauty guide.
Everybody Check Your Face
Rows of women wearing white headbands apply cosmetics at a Los Angeles beauty demonstration around 1950, with small mirrors arranged across the tables.
A Mud-Pack Appointment
At Rotorua’s Ward Baths in 1971, an attendant tends to a reclining client during a mud-pack facial.
All Hoods on Deck
A row of salon customers sits beneath tall cylindrical hairdryer hoods in this 1960 photograph.
The Vacuum Helmet
A salon worker adjusts a bulky vacuum helmet over a customer’s head in 1941, complete with a small window for looking outside.
A Nose Job Without Surgery
A woman demonstrates a 1944 nose-shaping gadget, with straps crossing her forehead and cheeks and a small metal clamp fastened over her nose.
Getting Rolled Into Shape
At a 1940s slimming salon, Pat Ogden leans on a metal frame while a motorized roller presses against her midsection.