President-elect Donald Trump may have dibs on the slogan “Make America Great Again,’’ but “Make America Glamorous Again’’ — that’s the promise of a new lipstick called MAGA Red No. 47. At $85, it comes in a collectible package and even has its own jingle: “Lipstick shade so bold and bright/No. 47 feels so right . . . Make America Glamorous Again, with a little splash of red.’’
The limited-edition lipstick is the brainchild of Glenn Dayap and Caroline Lorenzo, a married couple who live in Fullerton, Calif., and describe themselves as “Filipino American entrepreneurs.’’ They saw a gap in the MAGA market — cosmetics — and decided to capitalize on it. “While there were products [for] almost every niche,’’ Lorenzo said, “none of them catered specifically to women in the MAGA movement who wanted to express pride and patriotism.’’ As for the jingle on their website, it was written — and sung — by AI.
The pair, both registered nurses, own three home health, hospice, and caregiving companies. They also run Kreizi Beauty, the predecessor to their newest business, GoRed Cosmetics. “That’s the opportunity we have here in America, to achieve anything you want,’’ said Dayap.
In many ways, it’s a quintessentially American tale of opportunity meets opportunism, though their vision of “embodying patriotism with every swipe’’ isn’t exactly unique. In September, a competitor, MAGA Red Beauty, unveiled a lipstick called MAGA Red at a conservative fashion show on New York’s Long Island (it’s now available on Amazon for $30).
But what even is “MAGA Red’’? And will a certain vibrant shade go the way of the American flag, which itself has become a MAGA symbol?
It’s enough to give pause to some progressives, like Morgan B., whose 7-year-old son has autism and always wears red, his favorite color. The morning of Nov. 6, he bounded down the stairs of their Maplewood, N.J., home wearing his usual “head-to-toe red,’’ said Morgan, who didn’t want to use her last name for professional reasons. She’d never ask him to change, but as they walked to school, she felt uneasy. “I don’t want someone to look at him and think, ‘Oh, that family must have voted for Trump,’ ’’ she recalled thinking.
Another woman had a similar concern about a red dress she’d bought for a big social event in Boston — she went with black instead. Meanwhile, clothing and textile designer Adele Mattern hesitated before buying a red car in blue Northampton, asking her husband, “semi-seriously, if we were buying a MAGA car,’’ she admitted.
Blame it on our red/blue binary, but the politics of color is practically inseparable from the color of politics — and despite its historical association with the left (we’ll get to that), today red is emblematic of the right. Red hats were just the beginning. Thanks in part to what some conservatives are calling a “patriot economy,’’ which caters to consumers seeking “anti-woke’’ products and services, a scarlet fever is spreading through the market, via everything from hammocks and seasonings sold on the conservative digital marketplace PublicSquare to sneakers and watches hawked by the president-elect himself — pushing ethical boundaries as he transitions into office.
In February, Trump released a “Never Surrender High-Top’’ gold sneaker with a red bottom, risking trademark infringement — French shoe brand Christian Louboutin is famous for protecting its signature lacquered red soles. It begs the question: Can anyone “own’’ red?
Boston College art history professor Oliver Wunsch, who teaches “A History of Color,’’ explained that colors can be trademarked in specific contexts and industries. In 1987, Owens Corning became the first company to trademark a color, for a product that’s not even meant to be seen: fiberglass insulation. You know it: “It’s that ‘Pink Panther’ pink,’’ Wunsch said. You may also know the robin’s egg blue of a Tiffany box or the dark brown of a UPS truck.
Wunsch puts MAGA Red into “a symbolic category,’’ meaning it’s not a hue found in the Pantone Matching System. Asked what shade comes closest, he settled on PMS 485 C, which best “matches the loud ordinariness’’ we associate with MAGA Red.
In the evolution of linguistics, red is so elemental, so primal, it’s generally the first color to acquire a name after black and white, Wunsch said. In other words, MAGA Red is basic, and therein lies its power. Blue is a more recent construct; explicit references to the color are absent from many ancient texts in languages like Greek and Hebrew.
Is there even one agreed-upon shade of “Democratic Blue’’? “I don’t think the Democratic Party has been consistent,’’ said Wunsch, noting that former president Barack Obama “often used a lighter blue, something close to cerulean,’’ while Vice President Kamala Harris “tended toward a deeper ultramarine’’ during her presidential campaign.
Over the centuries and around the world, red has been used to dress monarchs and militaries, denoting power, wealth, valor, and victory. Long before the MAGA hat, a red liberty cap symbolized freedom during the American Revolution and was adopted by the French to usher in a new republic. In the 19th century, a red flag became synonymous with workers’ rights, and by the 20th century, red was the color of the Communist Party.
Considering the history of red on the left, “its use today seems a little bit counterintuitive, to have it so fully embraced on the right,’’ Wunsch said. Red also has a history of weaponization. Wunsch recalled a passage in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf’’ about how the Nazis chose red for their posters to provoke the left: “It was a kind of trolling move.’’
In the United States, the politics of red can’t be discussed without talking about the televised results of the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential race. That’s when our current color-coding — red for Republican states, blue for Democratic — became embedded in our national memory, even though in previous years it had been exactly the opposite. “What cosmic decorator did the states’ colors,’’ asked then-Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi in 2004, “reducing a continental nation’s complicated political and cultural realities to a two-tone palette?’’
In the 1980s, first lady Nancy Reagan wore so much “power red’’ she earned the moniker Lady in Red. But while red has become a Republican hallmark, color is one of the harder elements to trademark, said Avraham Cohn, who runs the law firm Cohn Legal, PLLC, in Somerville. He boiled the process down to two tests. First, you must prove the shade isn’t serving a function — if it serves a utility, it cannot be trademarked. (The red of a stop sign serves a purpose; the red of a luxury shoe’s sole does not.) Second, you must show the color has acquired distinctiveness, he said: “When you see this color, have you begun to understand where [the product] comes from, just by virtue of its ubiquity and salience in the marketplace?’’
By the time Jill Biden wore red on Election Day, it was already so irrevocably associated with the right that her outfit sparked speculation she was voting for Trump. Then again, similar confusion erupted when Ivanka Trump wore blue for her father’s victory speech — Trump himself favors the color scheme of the American flag.
No doubt we’ll be seeing a lot more Republican red come Inauguration Day Jan. 20, but in the meantime some Democrats are doubling down this holiday season. The woman who sacrificed her red dress for a social event planned to pull it out for Christmas, she said: “They can’t take that away from me.’’
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.
