“With her packaging and my product, we could have ruled
the world.” —Helena Rubinstein on Elizabeth Arden
The First
Ladies of Beauty
Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein were not only pioneers
in the cosmetics industry, they created it.
Born Florence Nightingale Graham in 1881, Elizabeth Arden
was raised in poverty on a farm in rural Ontario, Canada,
where she dreamed of the kind of high-society life she saw
on the silver screen. Determined to reinvent herself, she moved to
New York City in 1907 and found work in a beauty shop. Three years
later she changed her name. Elizabeth Hubbard, another beauty
culturist, had been her first partner. The name Arden came
from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Enoch Arden.”
In 1912 she went to France to learn facial
massage techniques. Her scientific approach
to cosmetics—she collaborated with a
chemist who created a “fluffy” face cream
(Venetian Cream Amoretta) and lotion
(Arden Skin Tonic) for her—revolutionized
the industry. Arden’s great rival in the
cosmetics business, Helena Rubinstein,
was also a master of reinvention.
Born Chaya Rubinstein into a lower
middle-class Jewish family in 1872 in Krakow,
Poland, she was the eldest of eight daughters.
All of them had beautiful skin, which Rubinstein
believed was the direct result of her mother’s homemade
moisturizing cream, which contained oils, water and pine bark, a
powerful antioxidant. When Rubinstein went to Australia in 1906,
she opened her own beauty shop where she began dispensing her
moisturizer, which was based on her mother’s secret recipe. She
was so successful that she was able to open shops in Paris and
London. Then in 1914, she moved to New York City, where she
began what would become a lifelong competition with Arden. The
two entrepreneurs preferred to be addressed as Miss Arden and
Madame Rubinstein, but that wasn’t the only way they differed
from one another. Arden’s style—pink was her signature color—was
more feminine, suggesting a world of wealth and status, a pied-à-terre in the city and a house in the country. Rubinstein catered
10 American Beauty June 2009
to a very different kind of woman, one who was urban and edgy
with a dramatic personality. While they worked just blocks apart in
Manhattan, they never met; yet for 50 years they were bitter rivals,
each trying to outdo the other.
During World War II, Arden showed women how to apply
makeup and dress appropriately for careers outside the home. She
even created a lipstick called Montezuma Red for service
women that matched the red on their uniforms. By
1915 she had begun expanding her international
operations and opened salons across the
world. By the end of 1930s, it was said that
“There are only three American names
that are known in every single corner of
the globe: Singer sewing machines, Coca
Cola and Elizabeth Arden.”
In 1928 Rubinstein sold her business
to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million, a
staggering sum, especially since income
taxes didn’t exist yet. After the Great
Depression, she bought back the worthless
stock and opened salons in almost a dozen cities
in the United States. Her spa on Fifth Avenue featured a
restaurant, a gymnasium and rugs by painter Joan Miró. She also
commissioned Salvador Dalí to paint a portrait of her. Rubinstein’s
mantra? “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”
Now PBS has produced a documentary called The Powder & The
Glory that tells their story through rare archival footage, modern-day interviews, models and animation. Ann Carol Grossman and
Arnie Reisman based their film on Lindy Woodhead’s book War
Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein & Miss Elizabeth Arden—Their
Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry. Order the home video by visiting
shoppbs.org. —MARIANNE DOUGHERTY
FROM TOP: Helena Rubinstein in her laboratory in Australia;
Elizabeth Arden was also a racehorse owner and breeder.
