Beauty and Power: The Career and Influence of Elizabeth Arden

In 1907, Florence Graham left her calm, quiet life in Canada forever and moved to America’s largest metropolitan area. Leaving the poverty of her childhood behind, she chose to join her brother in the smoky, glittering world of New York City.

New York in 1907 was bursting with life. Men tipped their hats to one another as they passed by, the glint of their pocket watches catching the sun. Women walked arm-in-arm as their dresses rustled against each other and swept along the ground like flower petals. Automobiles, carriages, taxicabs, strollers, and bicycles crowded the streets, vying for the limited space. This was the New York to which Graham moved and, less than two years later, in which she opened her salon.

Soon after moving to New York, Graham began working for Eleanor Adair’s beauty company, where she first learned to manufacture and sell cosmetics.[1] Adair’s clients were “women of the highest social prominence,”[2] which contrasted the women who had typically worn makeup in the previous decades: actresses and prostitutes. In the beauty industry, amid pots of rouge and bottles of nail polish, Graham found her place.

In 1909, Graham went into business with her friend, Elizabeth Hubbard, and together, they established the Red Door Salon on Fifth Avenue.[3] The two women formulated different types of creams, lotions, and oils, and their business flourished. However, their personalities clashed, causing Graham to buy out her partner.[4] As the sole owner of the Red Door Salon, Graham registered her products under the name Elizabeth Arden. She chose “Elizabeth,” which was leftover from her failed partnership and already painted over the salon door. She got Arden from the poem “Enoch Arden” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.[5] Graham, an unknown Canadian woman, had transformed into the famous Elizabeth Arden.

Elizabeth Arden’s career began with this two-room salon and a loan from her brother. [6] To compensate for her lack of money, Arden worked tirelessly: formulating, manufacturing, and selling her products.[7] According to an article in Good Housekeeping, all of her products had a “special personal quality”[8] and were filled with “her own energy and enthusiasm.”[9] Pouring her boundless energy into her products, she would not rest until she was absolutely satisfied with the scent of a perfume or the texture of a cleansing cream.

Arden’s early cosmetics contained simple ingredients, such as castor oil, water, and boric acid.[10] However, what set her apart from her competition was her attention to packaging and the interior decorations of her salon, both of which gave her products and business a “certain aura.”[11] As for the salon’s decorations, with its Oriental rug and antique table, women felt as if they were entering a mysterious, exotic world.[12] Dressed in her trademark soft pink, Arden ushered women into this new world of the Red Door Salon, full of unusual scents and dazzling colors.

By the end of her career, Arden was the queen of her own beauty empire—an empire she built with her intellect, ambition, and determination. Armed with bottles of perfume, jars of cream, and a salon on Fifth Avenue, she inspired women to achieve confidence and beauty by using her products.

 [1] Anne Commire, ed., “Arden, Elizabeth (1878-1966),” in Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Detroit: Yorkin Publications, 2002), 444, accessed November 27, 2016, Gale Virtual Reference Library, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=ohlnk 162&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX2591300539&asid=a7795590765af9bae2856c731e51caae.

[2] Hambla Bauer, “High Priestess of Beauty,” Saturday Evening Post 220, no. 43 (1948), accessed November 4, 2016, Academic Search Complete, http://0-search.ebscohost.com. dewey2.library.denison.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=19786086&site=ehost-live.

[3] Commire, ed., “Arden, Elizabeth (1878-1966),” 444.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Bauer, “High Priestess of Beauty.”

[7] “Elizabeth Arden: Cosmetics & Beauty Executive,” Women’s History, accessed November 4, 2016, http://womenshistory.about.com/od/fashion20th/p/elizabeth_arden.htm.

[8] “If You Could See Elizabeth Arden at Work,” Good Housekeeping 95, no. 5 (1932), accessed November 4, 2016, Women’s Magazine Archive, http://0-search.proquest.com.dewey2.library.denison.edu/wma/docview/1821834775/68C525F6B14C45D0PQ/9?accountid=15131.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Commire, ed., “Arden, Elizabeth (1878-1966),” 445.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.