Persona

The beauty industry is based on the principle of self-invention. Madame, in consciously

personifying this idea, made self-promotion a seamless part of her business. She never passed
up an opportunity to have her face associated with her brand; any publicity was good. She was
constantly interviewed and rarely ended a session without giving the reporter a packet of products
or a ring from her jewelry-laden fingers (chosen in advance for the purpose). She deployed her
persona to maximum effect, especially through photography. The staging and controlling of
celebrity photography was a new technique in Rubinsteins lifetime, and she contributed a good
deal to its refinement. Thus, as she was well aware, her identity was largely constructed.
After World War II the cultural climate changed. In using her persona as the primary vehicle
of her firms promotions, Rubinstein had always been able to anticipate and adapt, but she had
never made full use of broadcasting. She had a strong Eastern European accent, ill-suited to
radio, and was even more uncomfortable with television, a medium geared to youth and difficult
to control. With the resurgence of the American economy, the beauty industry expanded into
mass retail, and Charles Revson, Este Lauder, and others joined its ranks. The restrained
advertising of Arden and Rubinsteins generation was overtaken by a more eroticized style, and
their luxurious, time-consuming salon treatments began to appear quaint to a busy postwar
clientele. The Revlon brand in particular invested heavily in advertising and made broad use of
the explosive popularity of magazines, radio, and television. Its full-color photographs in
magazines and stores across the country were noted for their provocative and extravagant tone.
Indeed, after the war, the newcomers to the beauty industry began to appeal more convincingly to
men and women whose daily reality was sitting at a desk by marketing a consumable style that
played on the desire to fulfill fantasies through the construction of a self-image.24 The fame and
glamour of figures such as Rubinstein and Arden began to yield to this revolution in media and an
increasing focus on youth. A person as baroque as Madame began to seem a bit pass.
Nevertheless, when Helena Rubinstein died in 1965, age 92, she was still in sole command
of her global cosmetics empire and still very much a force in the world of fashion, style, and
image. By the time of her death she had salons in cities worldwide and homes in London, Paris,
New York, the south of France, and Greenwich, Connecticut, all but the last functioning as
showcases for her decorative fantasies, replete with swelling and rotating collections. She had
influenced generations of women, not only in terms of self-image, but also as a role model of
individuality.
In her memoir, My Life for Beauty, written the year before she died, Rubinstein edited her
past as creatively as she had lived it. As her son, Roy Titus, wryly noted, The story of her life was
secondary to her. She never talked about herself. Her life had traversed nearly a century, from
1872 to 1965, an age of belief in modernity and in the power of the image.
Throughout her career Rubinstein recorded her image constantly in photographs and in
portraits commissioned from dozens of painters fulfilling a perennial desire to be seen, to have
her presence in the world noted. Aging mattered little: she simply used photo retouching to
retrace the outlines of her face or silhouette. In middle age she brought her own staff
photographer when she attended events and approved pictures for circulation.
Excerpt from the book Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, published by the Jewish Museum in
association with Yale University Press. 2014 by the Jewish Museum, NY. All rights reserved.
Available at http://shop.thejewishmuseum.org/Helena-Rubinstein-Beauty-is-Power-ExhibitionCatalog/PAMDICENKIFMFFNK/Product and http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?
isbn=9780300195569.