Natalie Thurston Perfume

When I was browsing ebay on January 18, 2012, I spotted a pretty perfume bottle which I thought I would make special mention to my readers because I never heard of the manufacturer before, so I did a little research and found some interesting info.




Miss Natalie Thurston was an international beauty advisor and created her own cosmetics company in the late 1920s and continued into the early 1930s. She also had her own perfume company and had an office in Paris and New York.

Her perfume seems to be simply called, Natalie Thurston based on the gold foil label, depicting a 18th century woman of Aristocratic grade, a popular theme at the time.

 I believe that Natalie Thurston perfume's were going to be part of a “line” of fragrances and maybe that didn’t work out. Thurston was most likely going to create different perfumes which would have necessitated that another label be wrapped around the neck of the bottle denoting which perfume was inside. Since I don’t see one or traces of one, I am just going to suggest that Natalie Thurston was the perfume name too.

The bottles she uses seem to be American slag glass ones that are made up of green malachite glass, possibly made by Akro Agate?

In a 1928 article, "Pretty Girls Have Odds For Office Career", Natalie makes a point of telling the young women that they have the advantage.

 "New York - Carry your diploma in one hand and your powder puff in the other if you want to succeed in business, was the advice given to a group of college girls here by that international authority on feminine pulchritude, Miss Natalie Thurston, of New York and Paris. 

“Good looks , careful grooming and a general air of prosperity,” Miss Thurston told an employee training class, “are as much a part of the working girl’s equipment as technical knowledge of the job she is about to undertake. Any employment agent will tell you that big business men demand beauty in their offices. “send me somebody easy to look at’, Mr. Average Employer whispers through the telephone to his personnel representative. ‘Remember I am getting along in years so is everybody in my home, and I want to be surrounded by youth and beauty in the office.’ 

Nowadays it is the rare employer who does not request his prospective secretary to remove her hat and be seated behind the typewriter, so he may see whether she fits into his office setting before hiring her. 

Pretty girls,” continued Miss Thurston, “enjoy all the advantages in business. They get the good jobs, the worth while promotions, and the offers of marriage. More sweet girl grads starting out on careers have lost out because of lack of beauty than lack of brains. At first thought this may sound unfair. But is it? 

The present age of perfected cosmetics has placed beauty within the reach and purse of every woman. Certainly those who are smart enough to make themselves attractive during working hours are putting more into their work than those who believe that pounding a typewriter or balancing a set of books is all they are hired to do. 

What makes the modern business woman attractive is not inherited beauty. Good skin, sparkling eyes, well-kept hair, carefully manicured hands and a trim, youthful figure-the result of care and sane, wholesome living-are what distinguish the office swan from the ugly duckling of business.”

Natalie Thurston’s advice for mature women’s cosmetics in another 1928 newspaper reveals that she “maintains that “Fascinating Forty” has advantages over “Sweet Sixteen”, if the older woman takes the care of her personal grooming that she should.”
 She also explains that “Blushing youth has no advantages over blushed -out maturity. If you doubt it, hire yourself a front row table at any smart night club and see who rates the masculine attention. Sweet 16 may win the dancing marathon, but when it comes to picking the women men love to look at, Fascinating 40 gets the breaks.IIn my opinion, there are more outstanding beauties between 30 and 40 than among young girls under 21, Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, the Talmadge and the Gish sisters, all famous for feminine perfection, are well over 25.”


She goes on to say that, “After all, a face is but the mirror of a mind. Theaverage woman does not begin life until she is 30. After that, experience, plus the perfected cosmetics of this era, givers her a 60-40 advantage over youth. But the older woman must remember to make the most of her advantages. She really needs to be more careful of her grooming than the younger girl in her first blush of youth.”


1928 the San Jose News reported that “Beauty Fools Average Man, says Expert.”

New York, “Can the average man recognize a synthetic beauty from oe who comes naturally by her loveliness? 

Yes, he can-NOT. 

Women, according to Miss Natalie Thurston, internationally famous beauty authority of New York and Paris, can tell nine times out of 10 whether the woman they pass on the street is an artificial charmer or a born beauty. But man-,"Ninety-eight percent of the time.”, said Miss Thurston, in an address before a group of cosmeticians here, “he is fooled.”

“Modern makeup is so skillfully and artfully applied that only a practiced eye can detect it from nature’s own. Just as they say it takes a thief to catch a thief, so in my opinion, it requires a woman who uses the lipstick and rabbit’s foot on herself to recognize its tracks across the face of another. If you disagree, glance around your favorite tearoom the next time you dine away from home and see for yourself if you can discriminate between the girl who cosmetizes beauty into her face and the one whom nature has endowed. The real and the artificial possess the same camelia complexions. Their cupid’s bows are identical. A microscope would be necessary to distinguish between their curled or curling lashes."  

“Up to the time that rouge, lipsticks, eyebrow pencils, face powder and all the rest made their debut in high society, faces were the chief battlegrounds of feminine competition. In those days women were taken at their face value. If a man encountered a lady with rosy cheeks or a peaches-and-cream complexion at a church social, he knew she was the unadulterated thing. There was not a chance in the world of his drifting away to her wrinkled and sallow faced rival. But perfected cosmetics have changed all of this. Nowadays a man may look and look and look again without being absolutely sure what he is looking at, for feminine faces have become conventional masks upon which their owners are painting their own conceptions of womanly beauty.”

The Milwaukee Journal, 1928, Rosy Cheeks? They’re Usually Painted.

“New York- If she’s over 25, men, the chances are about 30 to 1 in favor of the roses in her cheeks are being art work. 

There are less than 1,000,000 women over the quarter century mark in the United States whose natural color precludes the necessity of using rouge and lipstick“, according to Miss Natalie Thurston who expressed her views in an address here. 

“With the other 29,000,000 women included in this age period, makeup is as necessary to their personal adornment as hats. Color gives the feminine face as much character as the contour of the features. With the exception of around the eyes, there is astonishingly little expression of individuality to be found in the modern woman’s face as seen au naturel. A line or two drawn with a lipstick at the corners of the mouth can change a pessimistic person into an optimistic one. A hint of carmine on the cheeks may spell the difference between the blush of the 19 year old and the woman of 50. The average American man is not exacting., but he prefers color to a monotonous dead white. Think over the old maids in your acquaintance and you will find that they consist almost without exception of women who did not keep up with the trend of the times and the art of cosmetizing. Color attracts the eye, whether it be that on a canvas, a flower or the face feminine.”

In a 1929 newspaper blurb about the ingredients of lipsticks and she was asked “What do women wear on their lips?“ She is quoted as saying that women are putting “perfume, cocoa butter, beeswax, lanolin, spermaceti, paraffin and vegetable coloring.”

PS-Spermaceti was whale oil.

Natalie Thurston slag glass cream jar, photo by ebay seller mld1943 

Talcum powder by Natalie Thurston, photo by ebay seller billandshirleysbargains

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