Wings to Beauty: Jackie Cochran’s Marriage of Aviation and Cosmetics

This is part of my Virtual Book Tour in support of Fighting for Space. For more information, see the bottom of this article. I’ll be discussing Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics in a livestream on my YouTube channel Friday, April 24, at 12:00pm PST.

Jackie Cochran is best known as an aviatrix. She won the Collier and Harmon trophies multiple times. She was the first woman to win the Bendix transcontinental air race solo, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean during WWII, the woman who led the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots during the War, and the first woman to break the sound barrier. She worked as a test pilot when no women could fly jets, and held more records than any other pilot when she died in 1980.

She also ran a wildly successful cosmetics company, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics. Though flying and beauty may seem like they have no overlap, Jackie Cochran proves otherwise.

From the Salon to the Cockpit

Growing up between poor mill towns in the Florida panhandle, Jackie Cochran (then Bessie Pittman) envied the wealthy women she saw about town. She spent hours studying the intricate hats in the window of the millinery shop and loved the dresses on the fancy ladies who bought them. When she started working in salons at just 11 years old — her escape from a job in the cotton mill — she got her first look at the beauty world. She not only learned how to style hair, but also the…