Cire Trudon candle. Photo / Supplied

Cire Trudon candle. Photo / Supplied

From Vicks Vapour Rub on the chest and Vaseline on the lips as a child, to teenage years experimenting with budget makeup and shampoos while eyeing up mother's or grandmother's stash of French perfume and gold-encased lipsticks, we all have deeply embedded beauty memories.

Mine run from Avon to Arpege, from catalogue to the cachet of couture, albeit a bottled version of Lanvin's Parisian elegance standing like a beacon on a Christchurch dressing table.

In the bathroom there was green apple shampoo, and the Macleans toothpaste and pink Lux soap I still find on supermarket shelves. In suburban chemist stores, prized presents - cubes of bath salts, little soaps and mini colognes - could be found.

Later, there were enticing stands of Mary Quant and Miners makeup from England and Chapstick and Coppertone from America. Then came the department store days, where the promise of glossy magazines was laid forth. At 18, I signed up for a cosmetics class with a brand I still use now.

Get them early and they'll be yours for life ... my daughter already navigates the supermarket aisles to the family's favourite brands. So far I've kept her away from my new generation of favourite cosmetics, but, as I did, she plays with the perfume bottles.

Over time, our preferences change, but be they budget or prestige, mixing a sense of history into our consumer choices makes the spending easier to savour.

Here are a few brands that have not only lasted the distance, but have a story worth sharing.

We could easily have thrown in plenty more that are worthy of the heritage beauty brand tag - Elizabeth Arden's versatile Eight Hour Cream, first launched in the 1930s, and Revlon's red-hot Fire and Ice lip and nail combination from the 1950s for starters, as well as L'Oreal's Elnet hairspray, Mason & Pearson hairbrushes, Nivea cream, Olay moisturiser (first known as Oil of Ulan) and fragrances too numerous to mention.

Maybelline Great Lash mascara would be up there and from the past couple of decades fake tanning products and cult beauty brands are likely to throw up enduring memories.

New Zealand's next generation may well look back and think of products they've grown up with as this country's heritage brands. Contenders could range from Trilogy's rosehip oil to Suzanne's Paul's Natural Glow.

We'll see if they're still in the cupboard in a decade or two.

Cire Trudon candle

This French candlemaking house dates back to 1643, when a grocer moved to Paris and made the selling of wax candles a sideline to his customers and his local parish church in St Roch. The church burns them still. His son, Jacques Trudon, was appointed to serve the Royal Court at Versailles in the reign of Louis XIV. Despite Revolution, the House of Trudon remained in favour, including as wax supplier to the Emperor Napoleon. Come the worldwide fashion influence of Dior's New Look in 1947, Trudon found a new outlet making perfumed candles for luxury houses including Dior, Guerlain, Hermes and Cartier. Appropriately, Trudon candles featured in the 2006 Sofia Coppola movie Marie Antoinette. They are still handpoured, and made wholly from natural vegetal matter with pure cotton wicks. The candles cost $139, are known for their fragrance diffusion and lengthy burning time (50-70 hours) and come housed in antique-look dark green glass. Some fragrances are available in smaller travel candles.