The History of Green Concealer

Jack Dawn, the head of makeup for MGM Studios and the man responsible for the makeup featured in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), pioneered yellow-green makeup formulas for concealing and neutralizing redness. The majority of his clients were silver screen stars in the 1940s and 1950s, and Dawn based his techniques on those that had long been used by oil painters as well as those employed by mortuary scientists around the turn of the century. As Technicolor technology took over the film industry, the demand for color correction and all-over makeup coverage grew significantly, since colorized images are less forgiving than the traditional black-and-white. Then in the 1970s, makeup artist Joe Blasco was doing David Bowie’s makeup before a TV performance when the performer noticed Shiseido's teal-tinted Green Veil on Blasco’s table. He wanted to be made up in the green makeup and Blasco obliged. Later, Blasco decided to make his own green concealer and named it TVC 15 Neutralizer in honor of Bowie’s green-tinted performance of his song, “TCV15.” Blasco’s green concealer was specifically tailored to counteract redness in the skin and quickly became an industry standard. Over time, other makeup artists, cosmetic companies, and affordable drugstore brands followed suit, creating their own green concealers for reducing redness. Today, green concealer is popular in makeup bags all around the world and is frequently used to reduce the appearance of redness and to conceal blemishes.