If pressed to condense the life of her most recent biographical subject into three words, historian and former Monmouth College professor Stacy Cordery said the phrase “Beauty is power” would be an apt description for Elizabeth Arden.
Fortunately for the large crowd that turned out Sept. 18 to hear Cordery deliver a book talk at the Buchanan Center for the Arts, she was able to provide many more words in recounting the life of Arden, who rose to world fame from very humble beginnings in rural Canada.
Cordery’s book, Becoming Elizabeth Arden: The Woman Behind the Global Beauty Empire, which was published earlier this month by Penguin Random House, joins biographies the Iowa State University history professor has written on Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Girls Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low. Those books were both published during her 22-year tenure at Monmouth, which spanned from 1994-2016.
She’s not making this up
Cordery devoted several years of research to her 512-page rags-to-riches tale, which was not immune to a delay due to the COVID pandemic. Born Florence Nightingale Graham, Arden’s career was already on a solid trajectory at her “tony” Fifth Avenue location in New York City. What helped propel her to becoming “a household name on six continents” was eliminating the stigma connected to wearing makeup and elevating its application to an art form.
“In those days, the only women who wore makeup were prostitutes and actors,” said Cordery. “They wore a ‘false face.’ If they lied about that, what else would they lie about?
A visit to Paris helped Arden change that mindset in America. Seeing the beautiful, chic French women, Cordery said Arden realized, “Something is different about them – they had a certain je ne sais quoi. What was it? It was makeup. … Arden thought, ‘They look good.’ Her question to other women was, ‘Wouldn’t you like to look like that?’”
So Arden taught women how to apply makeup and, said Cordery, “That gave birth to the Arden look. Every woman she worked with would come back to her salon with three of her friends saying ‘I want to look like that.’
“What Arden did was make makeup acceptable. You have to understand, this is a sea change.”
Arden made sure that her business momentum continued, expanding from her base in New York City with salons in Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Soon, she had more than 350 up-market salons across the United States, as well as locations in several foreign countries. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman owned or ran a national company.
Her products stood out, and so did what Cordery called the “instantly recognizable” red doors on her storefronts and the packaging of her products in containers with a color that became known as “Arden pink.”
Helping Arden peddle her products were a select group of women.
“Her traveling demonstrators were the most beautiful women you’d ever seen – she sought them out,” said Cordery, who noted that Arden reached out to consumers in rural America through those demonstrators. “They’d be in Des Moines or in Galesburg, and people would come (to department stores) just to see these beautiful women.”
More of the story
During her talk and the Q&A session that followed, Cordery touched on several other aspects of Arden’s life, including her two marriages. Her first, said Cordery, ended when her husband “tried to take over her business.” The second, she said, was ill-fated from the beginning.
“It failed because she discovered he was gay,” said Cordery. “He brought his boyfriend along on the honeymoon. The longer story’s in the book, but that’s the shorthand version.”
On a related note, men weren’t part of the picture for what Arden sought to provide for women.
“She studied women and her field, not so that she could follow other women, but so she could lead them,” said Cordery, who noted that Arden developed the first luxury spa. “And her belief that beauty is power was not so that women could land a man. Her ads didn’t mention men. She believed in health and beauty because if you feel good and you think you look good, you can conquer the world.”
Cordery also shared Arden’s love of thoroughbred horses, which included owning the 1947 Kentucky Derby winner, Jet Pilot.
“She never had children,” said Cordery. “She said her horses were her babies.”
The author said her favorite chapter in the book detailed Arden’s efforts during World War II, which included encouraging women to serve and providing, free of charge, lotions, makeup and other products for the women’s service centers she helped to start, in partnership with the Kappa Kappa Gamma women’s fraternity.
Today, the company founded by Arden, who died in 1966 at the age of (perhaps) 84, is owned by Revlon.
‘Arden’ admirers
Cordery’s book is receiving favorable feedback, including a Kirkus review that called her work “a lusciously long and lively biography … Cordery makes a convincing case that Arden was responsible for many of the innovations taken for granted in the beauty industry today. As beguiling as a day of luxury beauty treatments.”
Publisher’s Weekly wrote, “The detailed insight into (Arden’s) business practices – including how she framed her treatments as a gateway to the elite – intrigues. Beauty buffs will be rapt.”
More information about the book and the author is available at stacycordery.com.
***Courtesy of Barry McNamara, Monmouth College***
