On the Cunard Queen Mary 2 Transatlantic Fashion Week crossing, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Lindy Woodhead. While her own life is a fascinating, fashion industry filled, story in and of itself (you can read more about her here), what I am excited to share with you today is my personal recommendation of a book she wrote about the two legendary, beauty empire queens, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein. The book is “War Paint: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry.
I think you will enjoy this book if you tend to enjoy history, appreciate the golden era of glamorous femininity, and like to escape into a time when people cared much more than they do today, about looking pulled together. This rags-to-riches true account of two similar rivals who never spoke to one another, is fleshed out fully with research, humor, grandiose living , and the history captivated me because I was tickled with the characters. I can see myself, or people I know, in some of these eccentric but charming characters. They were both fabulous with faults, and highly successful in business.
I picked out a few of my favorite quotes on each lady from the book, to showcase a bit of their quirky personalities.
First a few passages on Elizabeth Arden:
“Elizabeth Arden had lived suffised in pink, firm in her belief it was the single most flattering color, for her and her clients. Her flowers were pink, her tapestry cushions were pink, her cashmere car rugs were pink, her silk lampshades were lined with pink, her light bulbs were pink, her racing colors were pink, her linen sheets –changed every day and ironed after her early evening rest– were pink. Most of her clothes were pink, along with several dozens of her hundreds of pairs of shoes. Her product packaging was pink, the ribbons on her jars were pink. Over fifty shades of Elizabeth Arden lipstick were pink and even her favorite diamond earrings, purchased with profits from the lipsticks, were pink. When the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli called her signature fragrance ‘Shocking’ and packaged it in a pink flacon, Miss Arden said, ‘Hmm. It won’t work. When people think pink, dear, they think Arden.'”
“Elizabeth had no children, but she did have a maternal instinct. So the horses were her babies, her children. She carried pictures of them in her billfold”.
“Mr. Parke was asleep at his cottage at Belmont when the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Graham (Elizabeth Arden), panicking because she had dreamt that one of her horses had escaped from her stall and was up a tree outside the horsebarn. ‘You will go and check she’s all right, won’t you Mr Parke?’ she said. ‘Of course I will. I’ll call you right back,’he replied. Having stayed in his room for about ten minutes he called her. ‘You know Mrs. Graham, I climbed all the way up into that tree and I went in the stall, and I have to tell you that if she was up there, she got back down alright. Everything’s fine. ‘ Elizabeth was delighted…”
A few on Helena Rubenstein
“That year Helena arrived from Paris with something very interesting in tow– her second husband, the handsome, charming Prince Artchil Gourielli- Tchkonia. How New York loves a title and how Helena loved being a princess. The pleasure was all the greater for knowing it was guaranteed to annoy the ultra-snobbish Elizabeth Arden.”
“At one memorable breakfast meeting involving the approval of packaging designs, she hated the boxes so much she threw one of them across the room with such force she fell out of bed and broke her arm”
“…when Madame (Helena) was in meetings in her later years she would often doze off. An understandable trait at her age. ‘There was only one little word which broke through that sleep and brought her brain back to functioning’, said Boris, ‘and that was the little word dollar or pound– I think shilling would have done the same. It was absolutely comical to see that revival in her face the moment money was mentioned”.
It has been a long time since I had a book I enjoyed this thoroughly. It was truly bittersweet when I finished it, and that is when you know you really loved a book.
