The 1920s Cupid's Bow: How Cinema Redrew the Mouth

The sharp little "M" at the top of your lip has a name, a birthday of sorts and a film career. Before the 1920s almost nobody drew it on. After the 1920s almost nobody could stop.

Welcome back to the history series. This one starts in a dark cinema, with a camera that could not see red, and ends with the pen in your make-up bag.

Cupid's bow lips history: where the name comes from

The cupid's bow is the double curve of the upper lip, the two peaks either side of the dip under your nose. Turn it on its side and it looks like the bow that Cupid, the Roman god of love, carries in every painting ever made of him.

People have had that curve for as long as people have had mouths. Egyptians were tinting their lips with red ochre thousands of years ago. What changed in the 1920s was not the lip. It was the idea that you could redraw it.

Why the camera needed a new mouth

Here is the surprising part. Early film stock was largely blind to red. On screen, a red lip did not read as red at all; it came out dark, close to black. A full natural mouth painted edge to edge could look like a heavy smudge in the middle of an actress's face.

So make-up artists started cheating. They blanked out the natural lip line with greasepaint and painted a smaller, crisper shape inside it, with exaggerated peaks on top and a short, rounded lower lip. On a silent screen, where a face had to do all the talking, that tiny dark mouth read beautifully from the back row.

Mae Murray's version was so pronounced that the press nicknamed it the "bee-stung lip".

Clara Bow, Max Factor and the cupid's bow lip

Then came the face that made it famous: Clara Bow. In 1927 she starred in a film called It, became the original "It Girl", and her mouth became the most copied shape of the decade. Girls in Cairo, Alexandria, London and New York were suddenly all trying to draw the same two peaks.

The man usually credited with shaping it is Max Factor, the make-up artist who built a business out of making film stars look right on camera. Popular accounts say he pressed the colour on with his thumb, two prints for the top lip and one for the bottom, to get that neat heart shape. The detail is hard to prove; the credit has stuck.

Two other things helped it leave the studio. Lipstick had recently moved into a metal tube, so it could finally live in a handbag. And the young women of the 1920s made a point of applying it in public, at the table, in front of everyone. A generation earlier that would have been a scandal. Now it was the point.

The cupid's bow was the first lip contour

Look at what those studio artists were actually doing. They were ignoring the natural lip line and drawing a better one. They were building shape with a darker edge. They were making the mouth look different from how it was born.

That is lip contouring. A century before the word turned up on your feed, it was being done under hot lights with a pot of greasepaint.

The shape has moved since. In the 1930s the fashion flipped and the same studios began drawing lips bigger than nature, out past the edges. Today we do a bit of both: keep the peaks sharp, add a little fullness where we want it.

How to draw a 1920s cupid's bow today

You do not need greasepaint or a thumb. You need something precise that stays where you put it.

Start at the top. With Lip Contour Stain, mark a small "X" at the centre of your upper lip so the two peaks are crisp and even. Then draw from each peak out to the corner, and trace the lower lip to match. It is creamy and high-pigment, glides without dragging, and holds its line for 12 hours, which is rather longer than a silent film. For the vintage mood, try Berry Baddie or Raisin Rebel.

Fill in softly towards the centre, then finish with Lip Glaze on the middle of the lips only. It is a hybrid serum and gloss with a glass-like shine and no stickiness, and keeping it off the edges lets the bow stay sharp. There is even a shade called Pink Bow. We could not resist.

Both are dermatologist-tested, and if the shade you pick is not quite your shade, we exchange it for another one, free. Delivery takes two to three days across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan, and there is more to pair them with in our sets.

Next episode: where to overline, where not to, and how to use a contour for fuller lips.

FAQ: cupid's bow lips

What is a cupid's bow on the lips?

It is the double curve at the centre of the upper lip, with two peaks and a dip between them. The name comes from its likeness to the bow carried by Cupid in classical art. Some people have a very defined one naturally, others a softer, flatter curve.

Who made cupid's bow lips famous?

The silent film star Clara Bow, especially after her 1927 film It. The make-up artist Max Factor is generally credited with creating and popularising the shape on screen. Other actresses of the era, such as Mae Murray, wore similar looks.

How do I make my cupid's bow more defined?

Mark a small "X" at the centre of your upper lip with a lip contour, then connect the peaks to the corners of your mouth. Keep gloss to the centre of the lips so the edge stays crisp. A slightly deeper shade on the outline than in the middle makes the shape stand out more.