The Mass Production of Cosmetics
A double biography of Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, the pioneers of the cosmetic industry as we know it today has been published (that was back in 2003). But is make-up a blessing or a tyranny for women?
Listen to this interesting interview here from the archive at BBC.co.uk Radio 4 - Woman’s Hour. The author of the biography War Paint, Lindy Woodhead joins Jenni to discuss the legacy these women have left us.
From the Book Description of War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry by Lindy Woodhead :
The amount of research and meticulous personal data in this book is really quite remarkable and compelling. It provides a wealth of information from which to draw wonderfully three-dimensional characters and humanizes this iconic twosome."
-Raquel Welch
"I have seldom enjoyed a book so much as War Paint. The research is staggering-I loved all the detail about society and the arts in Paris, New York, and London that so beautifully set our two heroines in context during such a long span of years . . . it was a wonderful read."
-Lulu Guinness
"A compelling cosmetic portrait of the first half of the twentieth century."
-W magazine
"So riveting that it reads like the movie that will surely be made. . . . With first-hand research and fast-paced prose, Woodhead has succeeded in turning dusty archives into high drama."
-Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune
"It might seem impossible to wring another drop of H2O (water is still a 90 percent base of most cosmetics), let alone humour and historical interest, out of the absurd but ever-alluring beauty business, but Lindy Woodhead has succeeded."
-Nicky Haslam, Literary Review
"These were women who were tough in business, who had a single vision-an idea of what they believed in and would do anything to get there."
-Bobbi Brown