Jo Lee Magazine - Luxury Edition 2020

NOSTALGIA AND YOU —————————————————————————————
La Nostalgie Et Vous | Nostalgia Y Usted | Nostalgia Und Sie |
Antipodean Beginnings
By Kerry Baker
Brisbane – Australia
In 1896, cosmetics giant Helena Rubenstein, at age 24, emigrated from Poland to Australia with little
money and less English. This enterprising achiever, while waitressing at a fashionable tearoom in
Melbourne, found an affluent admirer who was prepared to back her dreams of marketing beauty creams.
Her debut product was a face cream titled “Crème Valaze”. It cost her around ten pence to manufacture and
sold for six shillings a jar. It proved hugely popular and she was soon able to open a salon. Sydney was the
next metropolis to fall under the Rubenstein spell and another store was launched there. In 1908, with her
sister Ceska at the helm of the Melbourne shop, the profits from her Australian businesses were sufficient to
open an establishment in London, the Salon de Beauté Valaze.
She also married in London that year and in 1912 she and husband Edward Titus moved to Paris where she
again opened a signature beauty store. The advent of World War One saw them move to New York City
where, in 1915, she opened a cosmetics salon that was to lead to a veritable chain throughout the United
States.
But she did not have it all her own way in the expansion of the beauty dream. Elizabeth Arden was also a
canny businesswoman who knew the value of luxurious packaging, celebrity endorsements, and the
introduction of a form of pseudoscience with cosmetics. The women remained rivals for most of their
working lives.
By the mid-1930s Rubenstein’s empire was formidable and her connections impressive. When she set up her
famous spa on Fifth Avenue, Joan Miró assisted with the decoration. Salvador Dalí, as well as doing her
portrait, also designed a powder compact. From humble beginnings selling face creams, by 1937 the full
line of Rubenstein beauty products used lanolin suffused with lavender, water lilies and pine bark.
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