Cool vintage beauty tools: What Ebay brought us this week

Want to know what some of the cool beauty tools women used to be beautiful? An ebay or etsy search will give you a fun adventure into vintage hair and makeup tools that

I’m not gonna lie. I have some “not buyers” remorse. I look at some things I have seen on websites like this that I passed up, like the Lana Turner hair accessory auction her daughter held and I am kicking myself for not just going for it.

1960s Vanity Makeup Tray & Mirror Combo

This 1960s makeup tray with matching mirror could be a hair tool tray as well. The little upper holes would have been used as lipstick holders, but I have another idea.

Glue a little magnet to the bottom under the hole and then you could store your hairpins in the holes. Why the magnet? you ask. Otherwise, you risk the hairpins slipping down inside the casing. The magnet will keep the pins in place.

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Hairspray cover – so your hairspray looks pretty too

Honestly, I have so many beauty products on my bathroom vanity that, if I had a pretty cover for each one, I would no longer be able to see the counter top.

But, in the 1950s, when these hairspray covers were popular, women did not have 14 different haircare products. They had hairspray. They went to the salon each week to have their hair set or would set their own hair at home once or twice a week and that was it.

Hairstylist and Hairdryer salt and pepper shakers

As a hairstylist, these little salt and pepper shakers caught my eye. Doesn’t everyone need a ceramic representation of what they do for a living on their kitchen table?

It’s a hooded hairdryer for home use…with a built in stool?

I have never, ever seen a basic hood home-use hairdryer attached to a stool like this, except in this one instance. Anyone else? Please comment or email me. I am slightly infatuated with this.

Judging by the style, I am assuming this is from the 1960s… probably the early to mid 1960s. The decal of the columns makes me think of a sort of greek revival thing that was happening at the time. Also the color white would have been considered too boring for the 1950s, but chic in the 1960s.

I reviewed my favorite hood hair dryers available today on YouTube, which you can see below. But if you are looking for a TLDR version, these were my 2 favorites: a Soft Bonnet Hood to attach to your handheld hairdryer and a Hard Hood Hair Dryer for home use.

For girl’s poker night, Breck Hair playing cards

The famous Breck girl… I think the oldest Breck girl advertisement I have in a magazine is from the 1930s. That is when Breck Shampoo first was sold by Dr. John H. Breck. I did a little internet information diving and found out that Breck shampoo is still sold, but to institutional market…hospitals, schools, etc.

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Bakelite hair tools

There are 2 words I never thought I would use to search for a vintage hair tool. These two words are “bakelite” and “hairdryer”. But here I am looking at a beautiful 1940s red and black bakelite hairdryer. They were made by Wahl Clipper Corporation. So why is this significant?

If you are not familiar with bakelite, the long and short of it is that it was the first consumer grade “plastic”. What I mean by that is that is that Bakelite was the first thermosetting plastic synthetically produced that was heat resistant and didn’t conduct electricity. So it would make a great, safer casing for an electric hairdryer.