Case Study

Lipstick tubes have taken on outsize personas, from status objects to conversation pieces

- By Laura Regensdorf

“IT WAS HORRENDOUS, and it was fast. The whole thing was over before I’d actually drawn a breath,” says makeup artist Lisa Eldridge, recounting a moment of stomach-dropping triumph: winning Audrey Hepburn’s lipstick case at Christie’s in 2017. (Auction records show a healthy five-figure tag, hence the 1950s relic “lives in a very big safe,” she adds.) The Cartier tube, made of 18-karat gold with a cabochon sapphire, hails from a time of everyday pageantry, before plastic upended cosmetics packaging. Now, amid a push for more fanfare and ideally less waste, lipstick is again an object of infatuation. What’s inside still counts—Eldridge gleefully discovered the actor’s shade of salmon pink, which may yet spark ideas for her own line— but glamour demands a package deal.