I’ve written before about lipstick and revolution in the context of the Spanish civil war and how, in a famous photograph of Republican milicianas, one of the young women is clearly wearing lipstick.

But something I didn’t know, was that lipstick had a history with rebellion – apparently suffragettes in both Britain and the USA would often wear red lipstick at demonstrations – something ‘nice’ women didn’t do in public before world war one – to emphasise their liberation from the social conventions of the time.

(There is a myth that Elizabeth Ardern handed out free red lipsticks to suffragettes at a major demonstration in New York in 1912 – unfortunately there’s no evidence that this was the case)

After world war one lipstick increasingly became associated with modernity and women would often wear it as a way of asserting their identity as liberated individuals, rather than being confined to society’s straitjacket…