Cold Cream & The American Drugstore

Of course we all have a little black and white picture in mind, some vamp, tramp, diva or Lolita applying layers of cold cream in a glamorous fashion, some may even have grandmothers and mothers still doing the same, but what happened to the cold cream cleanser? This whistle stop, budget to luxe – luxe to home-made article explores how the cold cream and its many aliases redefined the face of Western skincare. Credited to Galen and refined by Asia, the penny dropped in the US and UK, briefly during 1920’s boom, and finally, at the end of the Second World War when we realized we needed something between us and the elements.



A clarifying cleanser with Old Hollywood association, the cold cream, native to the American Drugstore, carries romantic soda fountain ideology of small town America, as referenced in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Truman Capote’s Children On Their Birthdays.

“All the neighbors along our street came out on their porches, and Mrs Sawyer, layers of cold cream whitening her face, trotted sassily across the dusty path,” Truman Capote, Children On Their Birthdays, 1948.

What is it?

A beautifying emulsion of water in oil, often rose water in rose and bee’s wax, it attracts and removes makeup and surface debris while strengthening and clarifying skin. The sister product to vanishing cream, oil in water, it’s less practical as a base for makeup where vanishing cream created a luminous crease free base for, back then, copious amounts of powder.



A pilot to moisturizer, the most notable and widely used Pond’s formula gave birth to the idea of a skincare regime, allowing post war British and American women the opportunity to dabble, while fully fledged skincare regimes were already engrained through generations of French and Japanese women.

Who did it first, and best?

Of course the first available to purchase was Vaseline’s, a fairly niche product in 1876, followed by Pond’s Institute in 1907, Shiseido’s refined Japanese addition in 1918 and the risqué Woodbury in 1927.

All re-marketed during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s for post war tastes and money, Shiseido, “the world’s oldest skincare manufacturer,” who, incidentally, had a soda fountain in Tokyo’s first department style store during the 1920’s, managed to slip their cold cream into the US via the back door, Hawaii, during the 60’s.

Cover Girls

Post WW2, advertising boom America saw Hollywood starlets and society figures putting their faces to the vanity product.



A post Gilda Rita Hayworth teamed up with racy Woodbury in 1943, the first brand to experiment with semi nude advertising.

While heiress and socialite, Nancy Du Pont, of the prominent Roosevelt (President Franklin D. Roosevelt) and Du Pont (auto mobile, oil and gas) dynasties, credited the conservative Pond’s across national newspapers in 1954.

The Current Cold Cream Market

From the bio-rhythmic Weleda to the thermal springs of Avene, there are few, beside the many aliases, that still go by the name cold cream, adhering to its trademark water in oil formula. With key cold cream ingredients and original water in oil formulas, we’re also addressing the luxe skincare aliases available in most leading department stores.

So there it is folks, we pretty much have Pond’s and our grandparents to thank for the present condition of our skin.

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