The influence of this woman was so great that the brand continues to bear her name, although it has long had nothing to do with family. After changing several owners, it became the property of cosmetic giant Revlon three years ago. Decorative cosmetics, skin care products and perfumes remained from the former diversity. Some of the names, such as Eight-Hour Cream and Blue Grass perfume, were created with the direct participation of Elizabeth and are still in demand 53 years after her death.
Longevity is the best recommendation, which is why stars who decided to immortalize themselves in fragrances often chose Elizabeth Arden as their partners. In the laboratories of the company, perfume lines of many celebrities were born, including Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. The passion for this kind of projects and the deplorable sales results of the resulting product in 2014-2016 were the last straw that drowned the previous management of the brand. Despite the sonorous names and grand launches, buyers stubbornly did not want to smell like pop sensations. They were still snapping up the 8-hour sunscreen that Elizabeth Arden once rubbed into the sides and legs of her racehorses.
Little ambition
From the point of view of official statistics, a woman named Elizabeth Arden never existed. Her birth certificate records that on December 31, 1878, Florence Nightingale Graham was born in the Canadian village of Woodbridge. She was named after a famous contemporary, a nurse who became famous as the "Angel of Mercy" during the Crimean War, and then created a training system for junior medical personnel.
Flo's parents moved to Canada from the UK. The well-to-do family of the mother objected to her romance with a poor Scotsman; in order to get married, the lovers had to flee overseas. They rented a farm, which the father of the family tried to turn into a stud farm. However, "hut heaven" has always been a risky venture: exhausted by endless pregnancies, deprived of proper care, Susan Graham burned out from tuberculosis when Florence was only six years old.
The children shared responsibilities. The two older girls ran the house, the only boy helped his father in the fields, and the younger Flo and Gladys looked after the horses. As Flo grew older, she reluctantly became a family doctor, with childlike spontaneity applying the same treatments to both bipedal and hoofed households. Poverty oppressed the girl: she early formulated for herself the first part of her life plan - "to become the richest little woman in the world." It remained to understand how.
Florence did not finish high school. The father decided that it was enough just to sit over notebooks, it was time to learn something for which she would be paid. Relying on the magic of the name, Flo left for a nursing course in Toronto, but soon found that she was too unpleasant to be around sick people. Not that the girl lacked compassion, on the contrary, she wanted to "make everyone young, healthy and beautiful." During the short time spent in the hospital, Flo learned about the existence of ointments to restore skin after burns and wondered if the composition could be adjusted for cosmetic purposes.
She conducted experiments at home in the kitchen, using her younger sister as a guinea pig. A disgusting smell floated around, giving rise to a rumor that the completely impoverished Graham was feeding on rotten eggs. A local priest, out of the kindness of his soul, brought the father of the family a basket of fresh eggs, after which he, in a rage, delivered an ultimatum to his daughter: "Either get married, or return to the city to look for work!" (read also: "How the creators of Amazon, IKE and other successful companies made money as a child").
Florence chose the second option, announcing at last that she would still invent a means that would lift the family out of poverty. The laboratory in her imagination was already producing creams and lotions for skin care with might and main, only knowledge was lacking. A young woman without education and profession did not have to choose a place of work, but she gravitated towards everything that was associated with improving her appearance. The most tangible benefit came from two years as a dental assistant. In the waiting room, Flo looked closely at patients, listened to conversations about fashion trends from New York and claims to existing cosmetics, learned more about imperfections in appearance, ways to correct them or lack thereof.
In 1908, 30-year-old Florence decided that in conservative Toronto, the business she had conceived would not be able to unfold, because the kingdom was small and poor. To realize ambitions, one had to be in the center of events, among the latest fashions and big money. Shrugging off her father's objections, she bought a ticket to New York, where her brother had moved some time ago.
My name is Elizabeth Arden
Florence's American career began as a bookseller at ER Squibb Pharmaceuticals. At every opportunity she threw the ledgers and went to the laboratory to observe what the chemists were doing and how.
Flo received her cosmetology practice in the beauty salon Eleanor Ader, where she got a job as an administrator. The owner of the salon agreed to teach her about massage, manicure and other tricks on the condition that Flo will practice without prejudice to basic duties and at no additional cost. However, soon Ader still had to look for a new girl at the reception, because the fame of the "healing hands" of the new masseuse went for a walk around Manhattan, and a queue lined up to see Florence.
Two years after moving to New York, Miss Graham felt ready to open her own beauty salon. She borrowed $ 6,000 from her brother and rented a space on Fifth Avenue in half with her beautician friend Elizabeth Hubbard. The women met while Flo spent the evenings and on weekends exploring the range of creams in shops and salons around town. The skin care products that Elizabeth blended seemed to Flo more perfect than what Eleanor Ader offered to clients.
The companions furnished the place like a boudoir of a pink-obsessed courtesan, spent money on the gilded sign “Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard's Salon” on the window and came up with an enticing ad offering “the secrets of the beauty of Ancient Greece, relaxing and invigorating massage, manicure” and other lovely ladies' heart treatments.
A month later, the question of the distribution of earnings quarreled the girlfriends to death (read also: "Business and Friendship: Can You Work with Your Best Friend"). Thanks to her friendly relations with the landlord, Flo kept the premises to herself. Gold paint for painting the window was not cheap - the desire to save money gave rise to the idea of changing only the owner's name. Graham understood that the promotion under the name Florence Nightingale would in any case be difficult, since it was associated with another woman - a just deceased ascetic national heroine. The stern face of the "angel of mercy" that immediately emerged in the public mind was bad publicity for the cosmetics business.
Without thinking twice, the enterprising Florence appropriated the name of her ex-girlfriend and supplemented it with the last name from Tennyson's poem. From that moment on, the sign announced that the salon belonged to "Mrs. Elizabeth Arden."
According to the documents, Arden remained Florence Nightingale Graham until the end of her days, but she called herself and introduced herself to another only by the name that she herself chose. Hence her famous phrase: "There is only one Elizabeth who can compare with me, and this is the Queen of Great Britain."
Knowing no barriers
Elizabeth came up with the idea of painting the salon door in bright red, which attracted the attention of passers-by. The popularity of the institution grew. Even working alone, she returned the debt to her brother within a few months. Rental costs were reduced by providing jobs in the salon for two familiar hairdressers and their hat sister.
In 1912, Elizabeth staged an unprecedented publicity event for the suffragist march. She not only joined the march, but also convinced 15,000 participants to protest with her own bright red lipstick. Respectable American women of the early 20th century almost did not recognize makeup: in their understanding, only actresses and prostitutes were brightly or “pretentiously” painted. Arden, who dreamed of a wealthy high-society clientele, decided to change this idea step by step, starting with lipstick. Elizabeth knew how to demonstrate her products widely and in the most advantageous way. She would later create a MontezumRed color for female military personnel and pack them in tubes made to fit the uniform pocket.
Elizabeth rushed to Paris to find out what means are used in the world capital of fashion. The time for the trip was not suitable - 1914, the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. But in the excitement of the pursuit of the enchantment of the French women, Arden did not notice that Europe was burning under her feet. In Paris, she visited four beauty salons a day, begging for samples of creams that she liked. In addition to them, Arden brought from France to America something completely unheard of there - decorative cosmetics for the eyes (read also: "The best beauty novelties of July: care and decorative cosmetics").
On the return trip on the British liner Lusitania, she was courted by Thomas Jenkins Lewis, the banker she once approached for a loan. They got married in 1915: Elizabeth, keen on experimenting with French models, managed to carve out just an hour for the wedding.
However, it is unlikely that the wedding was deposited in her memory as the main event of the year. The acquaintance with the chemist A. Fabian Swanson seemed much more important. After discovering that all Parisian creams are heavy and oily to the touch, Elizabeth wanted her skin care products to be like whipped egg whites, easy to apply and absorb quickly. Swanson was the only one who managed to fulfill her order. In addition to the resulting Venetian Cream Amoretta, which Elizabeth touted as "the famous French formula," they created a mild ArdenSkin Tonic that stood out from the standard high alcohol toners.
Thanks to such innovations, by 1920, Elizabeth Arden became the owner of the largest cosmetic production in the world. She never tired of generating ideas that were original for that era: sets of color-matched decorative cosmetics, ready-made mini cosmetic bags for travel, a complete transformation in one day in the salon.
Every self-respecting city tried to get a salon with a red door, in which women were not only preened from head to toe, but also taught to independently apply the most advantageous makeup for their type of appearance, to use creams, and recommended a diet and exercise complexes. “We're looking for the fountain of youth, and it's here, at our fingertips,” Arden said. “If you devote ten minutes in the morning and in the evening to beauty and wellness procedures every day, you can forget about your age. Every woman has the right to be beautiful, but we owe a quarter of beauty to nature, and the other three to self-care”. Claiming that beauty begins with health, Elizabeth recommended eating only fruits in the morning and refraining from fatty dairy products. She was one of the first yoga promoters in the United States. If yoga seemed too strange to someone,the salons offered an alternative in the form of fencing or tap dancing.
"This woman" and useless inheritance
In 1922, Elizabeth cemented her triumph by opening a salon in Paris. She entrusted management to her younger sister Gladys, who married a local viscount and until the end of her days was in charge of the French branches of the empire, sometimes at the risk of her life. During the Second World War, she was arrested and briefly sent to a concentration camp. The Viscount de Moblanc was so in awe of Ardenne that he decided to save the salon, not his wife. But it turned out to be that very rare case when Elizabeth's family feelings were stronger than her business instincts. Although it ended well for Gladys, de Mobland was never forgiven by her sister.
In other cases, when the interests of those close or nominally close to her were at stake, Arden first thought about protecting the business. First husband Tommy Lewis served as managing director of Elizabeth Arden for 19 years, but never got a partner stake in the venture. “This is my company,” his wife told him. "You only work here." After the divorce, Tommy took revenge on his wife by agreeing to become the manager of her most formidable rival, Elena Rubinstein.
The half-century feud between the two trendsetters has become a legend, forming the basis of the book and the Broadway musical War Paint. Elizabeth and Helena raced to impress the jaded fashionable public of New York to pieces, lured away designers, chemists and perfumers, watched each other like kites, but deliberately never met or talked in person in their lives. And in conversations with other people they never called each other by name, only “this woman”.
After parting with Lewis, Elizabeth never found personal happiness. “I have always been lucky with women and never with men,” she said in infrequent moments of frankness. Arden's feelings for the publisher Tom White remained unfulfilled, as the Catholic faith did not allow him to divorce. The marriage to the dubious "Russian prince" Mikhail Yevlanov fell apart when, shortly after the wedding, bills for romantic dinners, flowers and gifts that he pampered her with during courtship began to come to Elizabeth.
Arden's children were replaced by horses, which she began breeding and training for racing in 1931. Paradoxically, she became the first woman on the cover of Time magazine not because she achieved phenomenal success in the cosmetics business, but because her horses won all the major races of the season and more than half a million prize money. Arden treated and massaged her injured pets herself using the newly invented Eight-Hour Cream. And then she recommended it to dumbfounded clients: "If this cream were not excellent, I would not rub it into my horses." It was the horses that gave her the opportunity to experience physical tenderness, the happiness of the touch of a loved one. A professional masseuse hated all her life when other people touched her.
Her empire grew to incredible proportions: she turned part of her farms into a network of prestigious Maine Chance spas, hairstyles for her clients in some salons were done by masters ordered from France, fashion collections were created, among others, by Oscar de la Renta. Arden entered high society, to which she aspired, was friends with the wife of President Eisenhower and the British Queen Mother. Fortune magazine wrote of her: “She may have made more money than any other woman in US history. And all thanks to the fact that the sun does not dare to set until Elizabeth Arden achieves the shade of pink in the bottle, the right consistency of cream in the jar and perfectly tied bows on hundreds of thousands of boxes of soap."
The truth of the quote was that Elizabeth was not loved by her subordinates. “I don’t need to be loved, it’s better to be afraid,” she said. Arden did not want to share the reins with anyone and remained the sole owner of the company until her death in October 1966. She bequeathed the company, the stables, six houses and everything else to Gladys' sister and niece Patricia, daughter of William's brother. But the state imposed such a ruinous tax on the inheritance of the brand that in 1971 Patricia decided to sell it.
If Elizabeth had made her sister or niece a partner during her lifetime, the company would have remained in the family, but Arden did not seem to think that she would ever die. Therefore, she chose to take all her secrets to the grave, on which she ordered to write only "Elizabeth N. Graham" and the year of death. Probably, something told her that in her case, death was relative, and the time to bury Elizabeth Arden had not yet come.
Photo: Getty Images
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