ELIZABETH ARDEN

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20464, 2 April 1938, Page 24 (Supplement)

ELIZABETH ARDEN

TEMPLE OF BEAUTY CREATOR OF MODERN LOVELINESS EXPERIMENTS ON RACE HORSES (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, Feb. 22. She is the creator of modern loveliness. she has glorified millions more women than Sam Goldwyn or Flo Ziegfeld ever knew, writes Frank Hales in the Sunday Referee. Her job is to beautify women all over the world from China to Peru. A list of her English clients reads like a feminine edition of “Who’s W ho.” Two or three years ago I remember a pigtailed schoolgirl sighing to me, “I suppose Elizabeth Arden is very beautiful." And I smiled a tolerant smile at -such naivete. For I knew, of course, that Elizabeth Arden was probably the trade name of a high-powered business man, or possibly a board of doddering directors.* My worldly wisdom had a shock coming to it. Later on I met the real Elizabeth Arden, and discovered that ‘lie pigtailed schoolgirl was entirely right. | Her eyes have the mischievous . sparkle of eighteen, her contours the smoothness of twenty-five. She is five feet nothing of slim vitality. I Truth compels ( me to say that I Elizabeth Arden is over forty. Politeness forbids me to be more explicit. At the same time I must confess that what struck me most was not her face, but her liny hands and feet. An Incredible Woman The fact that she is her own best dvertisement, however, is the least surprising thing about this | woman. I She controls every detail of her bus : ness personally. (And don’t her ■ staff know it!). She believes, as passionately as any 'apo’stle, that beautification is her great big Mission in life. Elizabeth Arden had a Scotsman for father, an Englishwoman for mother, she was born in Canada, and has the centre of her business in New York. So she is what you would call a cosmopolitan. Her real name was Florence Nightingale Graham. Just what turned Elizabeth Arden towards beauty culture she herself does I not remember. But you can see in a general way how her childhood experi- ‘ ences and excitements conspired to j switch her super-abundant energies [along that particular track, j Without any chemical training, she j began making up beauty preparations i and selling them. One of her first | problems was the question of a name I by which her products could be known. * Elizabeth chose itself. Arden came | from “Enoch Arden” the book she was I reading at the moment, Elizabeth I Arden. It sounded good. She wrote a I letter to herself, addressed it “ElizaI belli Arden,” posted the letter and j found it next morning on her mat. It j still sounded good. It has sounded l good ever since. I 1 don’t think Elizabeth Arden has : ever got over the thrill of her first I success. That is how she struck me, if there’s a new face cream, rouge, lipstick, or reducing, apparatus to he tried, she tests it thoroughly on herself first of all. Not a single little box of new face-powder goes out to Chile without her examining, and probably ( changing, the design of the box. Follows Intuition She had no training whatever as a chemist, yet she insists on selecting hrr own ingredients, and usually, to the chagrin of the experts, she is right. Requiring a suitable oil as the base of a new beauty preparation, she had samples of several oils -sent to her for testing. Rut without bothering to examine their chemical formulas, she picked one out. “That's the one I want,” she said, and nothing could persuade her i otherwise. "No, that’s the one. I don’t know why, but I know it is.” As things turned out, it was. I can imagine only one thing more humiliating for a highly trained chemist than to have his choicest learning overborne by a woman’s unreasoning intuition, and that is for the darned intuition to be right. The trouble about writing of this Elizabeth Arden is that it sounds too much like “boosting” her beauty business. Believe me, I know nothing about the sturf she makes. I am not boosting it. I don’t know whether it is better than others or not. But I can no more separate her from her business than the sky can be separated from the blue. Elizabeth Arden married: she became Mrs T. J. Lewis. But in 193 5 they were divorced. Why? Because of some romance? No. because in her own words: “He wanted me to sell my business. I could not sit quietly and see my life ruined.” Perfumed Embrocation She loves horses and dogs, especially horses. There is a string of her racehorses in training at Belmont, the United States equivalent of Newmarket. She has a house near them there. It is not the thrill of winning races that draws her. It is the gleaming coats of the horses, the grace of their movement, their clean, slender lines. Going into the stables once the I smell of the strong embrocation offendled her nostrils. So she sent a supply of perfumed embrocation concocted in her own I laboratories, and in reluctant obediI ence to her command it was used, j Unfortunately, stable-boys, jockeys, and trainer felt that the new perfume | was not quite the blend required for I horses. In fact, they called it a stink, i And until the old embrocation was restored they suffered growling discomfort —especially when jockeys from other stables were about. There is an apocrypha attached to this story: that Elizabeth Arden in- ' sisted on powdering her horses's wet ' noses. I cannot believe this. I Elizabeth Arden’s parties are lavish. If she throws one at her country home | in Maine, the guests are collected by j aeroplane. j In New York recently she hired the J Rainbow Room, the city's most exj elusive night club, for her party. She i hired the highest-priced entertainers. Ami then what do you think she did? j She hooked up the entertainers to an Elizabeth Arden advertising broadcast. Celery Juice Cocktail j Even t tie food and drinks at these 1 parties embody her own ideas

health and beauty. You are handed a cocktail that looks a genuine kicker. It is pure celery juice. When the grated vegetables, the delicate souffles, the pressed fruit juices are finished, she plan's no strenuous games, will not join any face-twisting contests of bridge or poker. Backgammon is her favourite pastime, and next to that a pleasant game of rummy. Exercise? Oh, yes. She is a great bcpever in exercise for health and beauty. The exercise she recommends is to stand on one’s head. An unpleasant face pains her. In her office she has a notice: "You may have been born without beauty, but the woman does not live who cannot be made ple .*a»it to look upon.”