Max Factor
line of cosmetics
Max Factor is a line of cosmetics from Coty, founded in 1909 as Max Factor & Company by Maksymilian Faktorowicz.
Max Factor specialized in movie make-up. Until its 1973 sale for US$500 million (approximately $3.8 billion in 2017 dollars), Max Factor & Company was owned by several generations of the family, becoming an international company during that time. Procter & Gamble purchased it in 1991.
History
Max Factor was born Maksymilian Faktorowicz into a Jewish-Polish family in Congress Poland under the Russian Empire.
By the age of eight years, Factor was working as an assistant to a dentist and pharmacist. At the age of nine, he was apprenticed to a wig maker and cosmetician in Łódź.
Later, he opened his own shop in the town of Ryazan, selling hand-made rouges, creams, fragrances, and wigs. He became well known when a traveling theatrical troupe wore Factor's cosmetics to perform for Russian nobility. The Russian nobility appointed Factor the official cosmetics expert for the royal family and the Imperial Russian Grand Opera.
“Max Factor” enters the record as line of cosmetics. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Factor, line and cosmetics can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Max Factor” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Factor, line and cosmetics provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2354647. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1973, 2017 and 1991.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Max Factor”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Max Factor primary sources, Max Factor archive and Factor research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Max Factor”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Max Factor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.