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The Woman Behind the Global Beauty Empire
by Stacy A. Cordery
A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and successful businesswomen in American history,Becoming Elizabeth Arden opens the Red Door to a world of wealth, glamor, and the profitable business of beauty.
Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup—not just actresses and prostitutes. 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. She developed the first luxury spa and insisted on a holistic understanding of health and beauty. Unconventional and driven, Arden fervently believed that every woman could be beautiful.
Acclaimed biographer Stacy Cordery does full justice to one of America's greatest entrepreneurs. Canadian-born Florence Nightingale Graham turned herself into Elizabeth Arden, using her uncanny sense of the possible to take full advantage of everything New York City offered, building her company and becoming one with her brand. In an astounding rags-to-riches tale, Elizabeth Arden came to personify sophistication and refinement. Her hard work and innovation made makeup, fitness, and style not only acceptable but de rigueur. Arden prospered throughout the Depression, reimagined women's needs during two World Wars, and by pioneering new approaches to marketing and advertising, ushered beauty into the modern era. Cordery delivers a compelling picture of a modern CEO whose career provides a model for aspiring businesses to this day.
"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." —Publishers Weekly
"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." —Kirkus Reviews
"The book sometimes borders a bit on hagiography, and Cordery has a clear fondness for her subject, but many readers will think the praise of Arden is well-deserved. Little time is spent, however, on exploring how white privilege played out for Arden and her business opportunities." —Library Journal
This information about Becoming Elizabeth Arden was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stacy A. Cordery, Ph.D., is the author of Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts, and two books about Theodore Roosevelt. Cordery is a professor of History at Iowa State University in Ames.
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