Ode to Perfumería Gal

Okay, time for a confession.

I’m addicted to chapstick. Lip gloss, vaseline, lip smoother – call it what you will, I am addicted. It’s been this way since I was a young girl and my mom, for example during a windy day on the ski slopes, would whip out her Chapstick brand lip gloss and encourage me to use it, too. It’s been downhill from there (no pun intended)…sometimes I feel like the girl in this funny video. Except you really don’t want to be around me if the chapstick goes missing.

So imagine my elation when I stopped by one of my local boutiques and saw that they are carrying my favorite lip treat of all time: Lip gloss from Perfumería Gal, Madrid. Just a glance at the small round tin filled with “vaselina perfumada” brings me back to living in Spain. I invariably had a different flavor of Gal lip gloss in every purse at the time. Today I bought the Violet scented gloss, which is my favorite.

Here are two historical pictures of Perfumería Gal I found:

Perfumería Gal began in 1870, and in the early 1900s owner Salvador Echeandía Gal introduced his perfumed lip balm. The company has been a mainstay of Spanish beauty products for generations. Many of their products feature beautiful Art Nouveau packaging. To see more historical photos of the Gal factories and employees, visit the blog Urban Idades.

Photos courtesy of Le rose aux joues and Urban Idades.