Color Stories: Behind the Scenes of America's Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry - Hardcover

Gavenas, Mary Lisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684865157 ISBN 13: 9780684865157

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

For everyone who's every slicked on lipstick, flirted with eye shadow, or browsed the bewildering array in any store's beauty department, Color Stories offers an insider's view of all the brainstorming, bickering, and bitchery that go into those little sticks of color and pans of powder.

About this title

About the Authors

Mary Lisa Gavenas has been the beauty editor at Glamour, Mirabella, and InStyle. She has also worked for Avon and Yves Rocher, acted as ringmaster at location and celebrity shoots, produced magazines for Mary Kay, and freelanced for Elle, Family Circle, Redbook, and Harper's Bazaar.

Mary Lisa Gavenas has been the beauty editor at Glamour, Mirabella, and InStyle.

Reviews

Following a year in the life of a product from concept to counter, former Glamour, Mirabella and InStyle beauty editor Gavenas offers a curious peek behind the closed doors of beauty editors' offices. She exposes the symbiotic relationship between manufacturers and magazines: advertising pays editors' salaries, while casual mentions by editors sell product. Gifts to editors abound for these much coveted credits and range anywhere from flowers to Cartier watches, depending on the quality of the product placement. Though Gavenas touches on some of the darker days of the business, such as blinding chemicals in Lash-Lure, a 1930s mascara substitute that went unregulated for years, most of her book praises the willful self-empowerment of some the country's earliest women entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires. Biographical sketches of make-up moguls include those of Helena Rubenstein, Mary Kay, Elizabeth Arden and Est‚e Lauder. Disappointingly, Gavenas pays highly successful African-American businesswomen Annie Turnbo and Madame C.J. Walker much less attention, squeezing their stories together into barely two and a half pages. Other than moving from door-to-door distribution to department store counters, the industry has changed very little over the years, according to Gavenas. "A century ago, beauty companies were pushing products with the same kind of romantic stories, pretentious promotions, and inspired goofiness that are still working so well." Gavenas effectively captures the attitude of the industry with her descriptions of photo shoots, runways and fabric shows, making this a well-crafted story of a booming industry.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gavenas, former beauty editor for several women's magazines, chronicles the monthly behind-the-scenes process that each year yields new cosmetic looks and products, tracing the route from conception to packaging to the cosmetic counter, while also offering the history of the industry. Highlighting the legends of the business--Estee Lauder, Helena Rubinstein, and Mary Kay Ash--she describes the beauty trade as one of the few avenues historically open to driven and ambitious women, a virtually recession-proof industry earning billions each year. Gavenas also captures the ephemeral nature of the product, the fanciful language and seductive advertising and marketing campaigns, and the strategizing behind the latest look, be it shimmering or "natural." Gavenas covers marketing techniques, including the free makeovers and give-aways intended to lure more customers. She also plumbs the intangibles behind the success of the beauty industry, the fantasies indulged by women yearning for simple, accessible solutions to the pressures of their lives. Women will particularly enjoy this look behind the scenes. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684865157
• ISBN 13: 9780684865157
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224