Elizabeth Arden’s life as a beauty trailblazer
Few women in the beauty industry had a bigger impact than Elizabeth Arden. Born in 1881 in Canada, the then-Florence Nightingale Graham first trained as a nurse before following her dream of getting into the beauty world by moving to Manhattan at 27. What followed for Arden is the subject of a biography-meets-memoir by fellow Canadian, Louise Claire Johnson, titled Behind The Red Door. Johnson could have written a straightforward biography of the beauty titan, but instead she tells her own story of getting into the beauty industry in parallel with Arden’s own life. The author’s fascination with Arden brought her into the industry too. Johnson moved from Toronto to Manhattan at 18 to follow in her footsteps. Coincidentally, Johnson arrived in New York in 2008, exactly 100 years after Arden made the same journey.
Beauty fans will know a couple of key facts about Elizabeth Arden. The Red Door was her first and flagship salon spa on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the door painted red to grab attention. In later years, glamorous socialites and stars like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor would stop for treatments at the famous spa. Arden opened the salon-spa in 1910, two years after arriving in NYC with $6,000 borrowed from her Louise Claire brother. She eventually Behind The Red Door ended up at the helm of a $1.3bn beauty brand. A dedicated suffragette, she is rumoured to have given out red lipsticks to marchers along Fifth Avenue in 1912 to support the female vote. By 1930 Arden had opened 150 Red Door salons in the US and Europe.
She became the first woman ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine and she bought and renovated Kildare’s Barretstown Castle in the 1960s. Arden had a passion for racehorses and the money from her empire in the 1940s and 1950s allowed her to indulge in thoroughbreds. A few won big championships, and as everyone knows, they inspired the biggest product in the Elizabeth Arden beauty brand, Eight Hour Cream.
The story goes that Arden created a multi-purpose salve for her horses to soothe bruises and injuries. The famous protectant got its name from one of Arden’s loyal clients who said it healed her son’s grazed knee in eight hours.
If you are interested in beauty and the powerful women that brought it to where it is today, buy this book. It’s available in bookshops and on Amazon, €24.57.