What makes these beauty products stand the test of time?

And we just can’t resist a story, says van Laer.

For instance, he says, in the Netherlands, where he grew up, the most famous range of creams, shampoos and soaps is, still, from a brand called Zwitsal, which claims it makes “the oldest beauty product in the world”. It launched in 1900 with a story: a pharmaceutical student went on a walking trip in Switzerland, and discovered a magic elixir which he took home, and turned into a pH neutral soap.

“For the early 20th century, that was unheard of. And it was branded as, ‘This is better for children’.” It taps into, he says, one of the most powerful stories around: the “hero’s journey”. In doing so, it turns the consumer – the individual who buys the soap for their children, in the supermarket – into the hero.

“[Most] of these beauty brands are using that in one way or another.”

For beauty podcaster Gemma Watts, it was the story behind how businesswoman Estee Lauder powered her way into selling her iconic scent, Youth Dew – still in production since 1953 – to big department stores in the United States, that made her have to have it.

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“She couldn’t get the department stores to start stocking it, so she went into [one] and just threw a bottle [of it] to the ground, so all these people were suddenly like, ‘What’s that incredible smell?’” says Watts, host of The Glow Journal. “And they whisked her upstairs, and were like, ‘OK, we’re going to stock it, we’re getting so many people asking for it’.

“Prior to hearing that, I looked at the brand as a heritage brand, which we sometimes associate with being prim and proper. [But] hearing that, I was like, ‘She was the original beauty rebel’. I wanted to buy it before I’d smelled it, because of that story.”

Dr Toni Eagar, a lecturer who specialises in consumer behaviour at the Australian National University, sees this phenomenon playing out with other iconic products.

“You have people like Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities saying, ‘I wear Coco Chanel’” – Monroe famously said that the only thing she wore to bed was Chanel No 5 – “but then you’ll get everyday people who make that perfume their signature scent. They’ll personally tie that brand to their personal identity. It’s the same way that Steve Jobs always wore black shirts. We use clothing, scents as masks, costumes, props to our everyday lives in order to project a sense of who we are to others and to ourselves.”

Other iconic products, says Watts– like Nars’ Orgasm blush, La Mer’s moisturising cream, Maybelline’s Great Lash mascara and Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Eclat highlighter pen – have attained their status because they “revolutionised” a beauty category. The pinky-beach sparkly blush, launched in 1999, made cheek colour sexy again after long being a “clown-like” product, Watts says, while the highlighting pen, launched in 1992, introduced the use of light-reflecting pigments around the eye instead of a flat colour.

Owning them, whether she uses them or not, gives her joy.

“It’s a bit like having a little piece of beauty history,” says Watts.