Our logo started out for our original company name Modern Vixen Vintage (now our parent company) with a literal photo of my lipstick print, and I wanted to delve into why and how this became our logo. When I first started getting into Pinup as a 16 year old, and watching YouTube Pinups explain how to do makeup, I fell in love with red lipstick, and the way it looked. I tried the pinks, the dusty rose, and even purple, but nothing ever made me feel more confident and comfortable with myself than a red lipstick. And I've been wearing red lipstick ever since almost daily.
Now, how did I decide to have it as our logo? Well, my drawing skills are not the greatest. I can do some very simple drawings like hearts, and such, but I cannot for the life of me draw a human shape. Believe me, I tried over and over again. I was trying to decide how I could make a logo that was not only simple, but was something that was myself being added to the logo. I looked at several different companies with the same niche area I am in, and found several with the designer as the logo, and I thought to myself that there has to be some way to have myself in the logo without it just being a cartoon version of me. And then one day it clicked, I could just use my lipstick print! I wear lipstick almost daily, and have loved a fantastic red lipstick for years at this point. So, I set out on a piece of printer paper and kept kissing it to find the best print, and our original logo was born! I still have that piece of paper tucked away in a drawer, and will eventually frame it once I have a dedicated office. And that lipstick print served us well for 5 years before I went back and redesigned it.
Now, redesigning my lipstick print into our beautiful new logo was no small feat. For one, I am still learning how to use Procreate, and two, I could not for the life of me get the shape correctly. What ended up happening was that I did another photo of a new lipstick print from a tissue, and put the original lipstick print over it and shaped it to that, and then sliced it in half several times to get everything to match and look as great as it does now. The color is also based on my original lipstick color -which I believe was Besame Cosmetic's 'Besame Red' or their 'Red Velvet' as I didn't start wearing their 'Victory Red' until 2025 (my new go-to red lipstick of theirs). I am very excited with how this logo turned out. Before, I could not add the logo to a shirt or anything that wasn't a white background as making the background transparent on the actual lipstick print made it look sooo weird. Now, the logo can be resized any which way, with or without our pink background, and can be added to any color of a shirt and not just be using the text part. It took weeks of redesigning it until it didn't feel too much like a cartoon lipstick print, and nowhere near a clip-art logo. I am so proud of how this came out, and I am ecstatic to see it last for the next fifty or so years.
Now, the name change from Modern Vixen Vintage to Dolled Up Vintage is a different story, but don't worry as I will be delving into that on a separate blog post!
XOXO,
Casey