Max Factor — cosmetics with roots in the Russian Empire
Max Factor was born Maksymilian Faktorowicz in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, to Abraham Faktorowicz and Cecylia Wrocławska. Most sources give his birth as 15 September 1877 in Zduńska Wola; Britannica gives Łódź, and one Polish account gives 1872.
He was apprenticed as a boy to a wig-maker and cosmetician in Łódź, and by his mid-teens was working in Moscow, where he later ran his own shop selling wigs, creams and fragrances. A widely repeated story holds that he worked for the Moscow wig-maker Korpo, supplier to the Imperial Grand Opera, that he was made cosmetics adviser to the imperial family and the Opera, and that he left Russia in secret. An independent historian of cosmetics has found no record confirming his connection with the court or the Opera, and the story should be read as the family account.
In 1904 he and his wife emigrated to the United States, and he took the surname Factor. The family settled first in St Louis, where he ran a barber's shop and, by the family account, a concession at the World's Fair. In 1908 they moved to Los Angeles, and by January 1909 he had founded Max Factor & Company with an Antiseptic Hair Store on South Central Avenue, selling wigs and theatrical make-up.
Film actors then used thick stage greasepaint. In 1914 he introduced Supreme Greasepaint, a thinner, flexible cream in twelve shades sold in tubes, generally described as the first make-up made specifically for motion pictures. When film stock changed in the late 1920s he developed panchromatic make-up after tests in 1928, and received a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, dated by sources to 1928 or 1929. In the 1920s, with his son Frank, he began selling to the public under the name Society Make-Up, and the company is credited with spreading the word make-up itself.
Pan-Cake make-up was patented in 1937. He died in Beverly Hills on 30 August 1938; his son, who took the name Max Factor Jr., expanded the company internationally.
"Worked in Łódź and Moscow, emigrated to the United States in 1904, settled first in St Louis and moved to Los Angeles in 1908."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Zduńska Wola, Congress Poland (some sources: Łódź)
Born Maksymilian Faktorowicz in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire (most sources: Zduńska Wola, 15 September 1877). He apprenticed in Łódź and worked in Moscow before emigrating to the United States in 1904; the widely told story of his service to the Imperial Opera and the court is not independently documented.
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Zduńska Wola, Congress Poland (some sources: Łódź). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.