Background
Elizabeth Arden was born in 1878 in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada. Her parents had emigrated to Canada from Cornwall, United Kingdom in the 1870s. Her father, William Graham, was Scottish, and her mother, Susan, was Cornish.
Elizabeth Arden was born in 1878 in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada. Her parents had emigrated to Canada from Cornwall, United Kingdom in the 1870s. Her father, William Graham, was Scottish, and her mother, Susan, was Cornish.
Growing up in poverty, she was not able to finish high school but instead drifted from one job to another. In 1908 she moved to New York, where her brother lived. Her entree into the beauty salon business was fortuitous: she took a clerical job in a shop that specialized in "facials, " facial massage aided by simple oils and creams and embodying virtually no cosmetic applications. Although Graham was 30 by then, she looked 20 for she was blessed with a smooth, cream complexion. This was her only qualification for taking up the "art of the healing hands, " but it was all she needed. Within a year she and a friend had opened their own shop on Fifth Avenue, a boulevard that was already exchanging its staid mansions in favor of upperclass shops and department stores. Soon she was the sole proprietress, doing business under the name of Elizabeth Arden: Elizabeth, because that was her former partner's name and she saw no reason to scrap its gold leaf lettering on the plate glass window, and Arden from the Tennyson poem, Enoch Arden. The new Elizabeth Arden added what became her trademark-a huge red door with a brass name-plate-and a new industry was born. Cosmetics were still not accepted for "nice" girls in America as the Edwardian era came to a close, but in Paris "la belle époque " was ending in a burst of social permissiveness. Ignoring World War I, which had just broken out, and braving the submarine menace to cross the Atlantic, Arden went to France in 1914 and was entranced by what she saw: rouge, lipstick, and mascara which, when applied with skill, produced remarkable effects and were being widely adopted. She came back from Europe with many new ideas for her growing chain of salons and hired chemists to compound smooth, fluffy facial creams and a high-style line of cosmetics that were snapped up at premium prices through her shops. A course of treatments at Elizabeth Arden's was not cheap, but it did not produce much net profit for the stores, either; some consistently operated at a loss as salons. But as outlets for her constantly expanding line of cosmetics, Arden's shops were very profitable. Innovation, in the classic entrepreneurial style, was her secret of success. Lipsticks came in wider and wider ranges of colors and shades to match a woman's coloring, hair, or costume. Face creams, usually based on petroleum ingredients, had been oily and unpleasant, but Arden's Amoretta was fluffy and luxurious; anything that felt that good had to be good for your skin. Inevitable, the cosmetics line demanded wider distribution, and eventually leading department stores everywhere could not afford to be without it. At her death on October 18, 1966, she had made no provisions for the disposition of the business in a manner that would minimize the inheritance taxes, and she was still the sole owner. A $4 million bonus to longtime employees; another $4 million to her sister, Gladys, who had managed the Paris branch; and a large bequest to the niece who had been her companion produced taxes that could be paid only by selling the company. It disappeared into the corporate maw of Eli Lilly and Company, but whatever it was that Florence Graham had brought to Elizabeth Arden, the new owners could not supply it and the name declined markedly in the hurly burly world of beauty care products.
In politics, Elizabeth Arden was a strong conservative who supported Republicans.
Quotations:
"Every woman has the right to be beautiful. "
"I only want people around me who can do the impossible. "
"Dear, never forget one little point. It's my business. You just work here. "
"It is remarkable what a woman can accomplish with just a little ambition. "
"To achieve beauty, a woman must first achieve health. "
"Nothing that costs only a dollar is not worth having. "
"I judge a woman and a horse by the same criteria: legs, head and rear end. "
"I pick good women, but I haven't had any luck with my men. "
Yearning to be accepted by New York society, she achieved it through friendship with Elizabeth Marbury, of an old New York family, and Marbury's ally in the world of high culture, Elsie De Wolfe. The lavish charity balls that they helped with were highly successful, but it is likely that her prominence as a sportswoman was even more important. The best was yet to come: in 1946 she appeared on the cover of TIME magazine-looking 40 but actually closer to 70-and the next year her horse, Jet Pilot, won the Kentucky Derby. In business or at play, Arden was all business. Like the true entrepreneur she was, she knew just what she wanted and usually got it. Never losing the outward appearance of the woman who lived for beauty and refinement, she held her own in a violently competitive industry where her closest competitor, Helena Rubinstein ("that woman, " she called her), possessed many of the same traits and racked up much the same success. But when it came to letting go, Arden could not, even as she neared 90.
In 1915 she married her banker, Thomas Jenkins Lewis, who took over management of the cosmetics lines. The partnership flourished but the marriage did not, and they were divorced in 1934. Prince Michael Evlanoff, a Russian émigré, brought little but glamour to her second marriage, and that soon wore thin; they were divorced in 1944, and Arden never married again.