Becoming Elizabeth Arden : the woman behind the global beauty empire

Becoming Elizabeth Arden The woman behind the global beauty empire

Stacy A. Cordery

Book - 2024

"A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and successful business-women in American history, BECOMING ELIZABETH ARDEN opens the Red Door to a world of wealth, glamor, and the profitable business of beauty Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup-not just actresses and prostitutes. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman ow...ned or ran a national company. She developed the first luxury spa and insisted on a holistic understanding of health and beauty. Unconventional and driven, Arden fervently believed that every woman could be beautiful. Acclaimed biographer Stacy Cordery does full justice to one of America's greatest entrepreneurs. Canadian-born Florence Nightingale Graham turned herself into Elizabeth Arden, using her uncanny sense of the possible to take full advantage of everything New York City offered, building her company and becoming one with her brand. In an astounding rags-to-riches tale, Elizabeth Arden came to personify sophistication and refinement. Her hard work and innovation made makeup, fitness, and style not only acceptable but de rigueur. Arden prospered throughout the Depression, reimagined women's needs during two World Wars, and by pioneering new approaches to marketing and advertising, ushered beauty into the modern era. Cordery delivers a compelling picture of a modern CEO whose career provides a model for aspiring businesses to this day"--

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Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor New Shelf 338.766855092/Arden (NEW SHELF) Due Nov 29, 2024
Subjects
Arden, Elizabeth, > 1878-1966.
Businesswomen > United States > Biography.
Businesspeople > United States > Biography.
Cosmetics industry > United States.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
[New York] : Viking [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Stacy A. Cordery (author)
Physical Description
xiv, 495 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 401-479) and index.
ISBN
9780525559764
  • Preface
  • 1. Beginnings
  • 2. The Beauty Culturalist
  • 3. Changing the Face of America
  • 4. Building a National Beauty Brand
  • 5. The New Woman and the Arden Look
  • 6. An Empire of Health
  • 7. The Beauty of Friendship
  • 8. Fashioning the American Woman
  • 9. Exercising Modern Perfection
  • 10. Inventing Color Harmony
  • 11. More Beginnings, and Endings
  • 12. Maine Chances
  • 13. Business Savvy During Hard Times
  • 14. Marketing Value
  • 15. New Directions
  • 16. War Begins in Europe
  • 17. Beauty and Morale
  • 18. "For Beauty on Duty"
  • 19. The End of World War II
  • 20. The Horsewoman
  • 21. "Beauty Is Power"
  • 22. Maine Chance Phoenix
  • 23. Maine Chance Mania
  • 24. Rounding Out the Fifties
  • 25. The Not-Yet-Swinging Sixties
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cordery (Alice), a history professor at Iowa State University, provides a breezy biography of the "high priestess of cosmetics." Born Florence Nightingale Graham in 1881 Canada, Elizabeth Arden moved to New York in 1908 to escape poverty. Driven by a desire to "make women beautiful," she opened her first salon in 1910. After traveling abroad to "unearth Europe's beauty secrets," she introduced eyeshadow--"a daring new trend" unfamiliar to most American women of the time--to the U.S.; popularized the coordination of clothes and makeup with a "color harmony" system; and framed lifestyle practices like exercise and spa treatments as vital to beauty and well-being. In the process, she shaped the era's ideal of a "new woman" who flouted "conventional gender strictures" yet gained self-assurance and social capital from her appearance ("Beauty is power... it opens doors that nothing else can open," she frequently said). While Arden remains somewhat of an enigma, the detailed insight into her business practices--including how she framed her treatments as a gateway to the elite--intrigues. Beauty buffs will be rapt. (Sept.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Cordery (history, Iowa State Univ.; Juliette Gordon Low) provides the definitive biography of one of the United States' first businesswomen: Elizabeth Arden (1881--1966). Born in Canada as Florence Graham, Arden came to the U.S. and founded her company in 1910. One of the first women to link inner health with outer beauty, she pioneered makeup use for the masses and the idea of self-care. Throughout her success, she continued to innovate, earning 97 patents and garnering a reputation as a marketer with high standards. Even today, a tube of her Eight-Hour Cream is reportedly purchased every 30 seconds in the U.S. The book sometimes borders a bit on hagiography, and Cordery has a clear fondness for her subject, but many readers will think the praise of Arden is well-deserved. Little time is spent, however, on exploring how white privilege played out for Arden and her business opportunities. VERDICT This well-researched biography is recommended for business history collections. A fun related read, Louise Claire Johnson's Behind the Red Door, offers insight from an Arden intern who worked there in the early 2000s.--Maria Ashton-Stebbings

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A lusciously long and lively biography follows beauty entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden's creation of an upscale empire that evolved and gained in strength over the decades from the early twentieth century on. Cordery, whose previous subjects include Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Juliette Gordon Low, keeps the emphasis on Arden the businessperson, noting year by year her innovations and new projects, with an eye especially to the many ways she responded cleverly to the current conditions of the country and the world and ended up shaping them in the process. She was born in Canada in 1881, the daughter of immigrants from Great Britain; her mother died when she was six, leaving five children behind with a father whose work as an itinerant peddler barely kept them clothed and fed. Arden made her way to New York as soon as possible, following in the wake of an older brother. Before she turned 30, she had opened her own beauty salon. Determinedly upwardly mobile herself, she aimed her products and services at "wealthy white women and those who aspired to their status." Because Arden left almost nothing in the way of personal writings or letters, Cordery constructs her portrait in part from the memories of others, but even more from the sometimes florid and always entertaining copy about her products that she, if she didn't write it herself, at least approved, with sentiments such as "the desire to be beautiful is older and stronger than the desire to be either modest or comfortable." Cordery makes a convincing case that Arden was responsible for many of the innovations taken for granted in the beauty industry today: eyeshadow, pink satin-lined travel boxes, signature scents, the concept that makeup should complement clothing, week-long spa retreats, a dedicated exercise room in her salon, and more. As beguiling as a day of luxury beauty treatments. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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