Lord of the Rings is helping keep a 50-year-old shade of lipstick alive

A lot of information about the Lord of the Rings films has been passed down like folklore over the past 20 years. In that time, the internet has drastically changed — in some cases taking with it vital information that had been painstakingly curated and cataloged by dedicated fans, who spent their free time running fan sites and fostering a community. Other fans have done the work of preserving that information.

In 2001, Lord of the Rings makeup artist Noreen Wilkie was interviewed by InStyle about her work on The Fellowship of the Ring. The interview included the first reference to the Clinique Black Honey lipstick that was used “to soften” Liv Tyler’s lips. At one point, the article was uploaded onto TheOneRing.net (TORn), a site dedicated to everything a fan could need — scanned articles from magazines, information about community meetups, and vital links to other sites like AlleyCatScratch.

This is a great example of how information has been passed along within the Lord of the Rings fandom over the years. The interview was first published in the print version of InStyle, before appearing online temporarily for AOL and InStyle subscribers. For a period of time, both TolkienOnline.com (now TolkienEstate.com) and TORn hosted links to the InStyle article. At some point between 2001 and 2008, the article was deleted, but the information was preserved on one fan’s personal site, Very-Faery.com. The person behind Very-Faery saved the article in Microsoft Word and then posted it on their own site. That site, though now also deleted, was fortunately captured and preserved by the Wayback Machine.

It takes dedication to ensure that vital fandom information remains accessible for future generations of fans. And it’s a task that is growing more difficult for digital archivists trying to preserve significant fandom sites like GeoCities from mass data deletion.

Outside of pulling this information from the depths of the Wayback Machine, the only remaining evidence of Black Honey lipstick being used for Arwen exists in a post that was originally uploaded sometime prior to April 2008. The dedicated fans at AlleyCatScratch created a handy guide to Arwen’s makeup, which listed both the screen-accurate palettes as well as less expensive alternatives to replicate the look.

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