The Corneous Stories transdisciplinary project by the collaborative platform N*A*I*L*S hacks*facts*fictions encompassed a student research project, a publication, an international group exhibition, and an art education programme. In Corneous Stories, artists, students, researchers, and art pedagogues have joined forces to open a new perspective on history and society through the prism of cosmetics and beauty labour. The group explored various understandings and articulations of beauty, as well as spaces, practices, materialities, and discourses connected to cosmetics (and makeup, in its narrower meaning) with a cross-sectional approach, methods of discourse analysis and historical materialism, and applicative approaches, interviews, close reading, and historical analyses based on accessible literature and sources, revealing the connections between socially conditioned forming of differences in gender, class, ethnicity, and geopolitics, on the one hand, and their aesthetic codings, on the other. We also unveiled the historical connections between the various industries, e.g. cosmetics, fashion, film, and car industries, touching the cosmetic sector; we reflected on the practice of cosmetics and makeup as labour; and focused on makeup in times of specific social conditions today and in the past.