Branded Beauty

How Marketing Changed the Way We Look

Mark Tungate

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780749461829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

Beauty is a multi-billion dollar global industry embracing make-up, skincare, hair care, fragrances, cosmetic surgery - even tattooing and piercing. Over the years it has used flattery, seduction, science and shame to persuade consumers to invest if they want to look their best.

Branded Beauty delves into the history and evolution of the beauty business. From luxury boutiques in Paris to tattoo parlours in Brooklyn, it contains interviews with the people who've made skin their trade. Analyzing the marketing strategies used by those who create and sell beauty products, it visits the labs where researchers seek the key to eternal youth. It compares attitudes to beauty from around the world and examines the rise of organic beauty products. Full of fascinating detail from great names such as Rubinstein and Arden, Revlon, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal and Max Factor, Branded Beauty is the ultimate guide to the current state of the industry and what the future holds for the beauty business.

1

CHASING CLEOPATRA

‘She who doesn’t blush by blood blushes by art.’

I finally caught up with Cleopatra at the Louvre. I had stalked her from the Musée Gustave Moreau, where I had hoped she might be hiding. But although the overcrowded walls of the artist’s former home were testament to his passion for wilful women – his brush had erotically evoked Bathsheba, Salome and Delilah – his portrait of Cleo was nowhere to be seen.

‘We’ve got the poster,’ said the lady at the ticket desk apologetically. ‘But the original is at the Louvre.’

A quick call to the museum revealed that the painting was not on show. Almost as if the archivist could see my crestfallen expression at the other end of the line, she added, ‘If you like, you can make an appointment to come and see it.’

There are many other representations of Cleopatra in the Louvre, including a François Barois sculpture of the queen writhing voluptuously on a divan after being bitten by the infamous asp. In another wing, we can see Claude Lorrain’s The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus (1643), an event that preceded her seduction of the Roman general Mark Antony. But the Cleopatra in that painting is a diminutive figure, dwarfed by the flotilla of ships heaving at the quayside, the magnificent buildings that tower above her retinue, and the blazing sunset that draws the eye to the horizon.

In Moreau’s late-19th-century watercolour, Cleo is the star of the show. And the palatial viewing room at the Prints and Drawings department of the Louvre was an ideal place to make her acquaintance. Marble columns strode into the distance. A fresco swarmed across the distant ceiling. Statues gazed from niches; cherubs smirked from bas-reliefs.

None of them were going to distract me from my rendezvous with the Egyptian monarch.

She was released from a rectangular black box, one of many lining the room’s infinity of shelves. For a moment I felt sorry that she was incarcerated here, prisoner number 27900, instead of taking her rightful place alongside Moreau’s other femmes fatales. But then, of course, I wouldn’t have been granted the privilege of a private audience.

The archivist gingerly placed the watercolour on an easel. Then she wandered off into the hush, allowing me to contemplate it at my leisure.

The Louvre’s description of the painting is thus: ‘Cleopatra seated, partially nude, in profile on a very high throne.’

Well, yes – but that hardly does the work justice. This is Cleopatra as we’ve always pictured her: the seductress of legend. She is framed by a brocaded curtain, as if on stage. She half-reclines on the throne, one bare leg coquettishly crooked, the other decorated with a tracery of henna. Her nakedness is emphasized by the sole garment she wears: a wisp of silk secured below her breasts by a jewelled clasp. She also wears a crown and a pearl earring; the queen, as we know, liked to dissolve pearls in wine. Her skin glows white under a full moon. Her expression is melancholy as she gazes towards the distant Sphinx (which was actually buried beneath the sand during her lifetime) and the pyramids. The fact that she is captured in profile allows us to admire her aquiline nose. ‘Cleopatra’s nose,’ wrote Blaise Pascal, of the looks that sapped Antony of strength and competence, ‘had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.’

In her right hand she holds a lily, although a rapier is well within reach. Her left hand lingers dangerously close to the small serpent that slides insidiously towards it. In the background there are silhouettes of buildings: an obelisk and a ruined temple. The queen looks radiant, but darkness lurks over her shoulder.

Cleopatra has fascinated for centuries. She is perhaps the earliest example of an icon of beauty, a precursor of the smooth-browed goddesses who gaze at us from advertising posters today. Yet despite all the legends about her, only one thing is certain: she existed. Cleopatra VII – the last and most notorious of the line – was born into the Ptolemaic dynasty in 69 BC. They styled themselves pharaohs, but in reality they were Greek; the first Ptolemy had served as a general under Alexander the Great. Cleopatra was more integrated than her forebears, who disdained even to speak Egyptian. A stone tablet in the Louvre, from 51 BC, shows her presenting an offering to the goddess Isis, of whom she claimed to be a reincarnation. Ironically, as was the tradition of the day, the Queen of Egypt is dressed as a man.

This tomboyish avatar raises interesting questions. There is little evidence to suggest that Cleopatra was a great beauty. There is even a vague suspicion that she might have been plain: Roman coins depict her with a hooked nose and a jutting jaw. In her (2010) book Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff adds to the portrait ‘full lips, a sharp, prominent chin, a high brow’ and ‘wide and sunken’ eyes. In his Life of Antony (AD 75), the Greek historian Plutarch hints that charisma was the true key to her success. ‘For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but to converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence… had something stimulating about it.’

Nor is there any proof that she bathed in ass’s milk, even if the beauty industry has been delighted to take that image and run with it. In the 1980s there was a French brand of soap called Cleopatra. An expensive TV commercial showed the queen sweeping into her private baths, accompanied as usual by an entourage of slave girls, musicians and bodyguards with oiled biceps.

Having said that, it is more than likely that Cleopatra had an extensive beauty regime, as did many Egyptian rulers before her.

ANCIENT BEAUTY

First, of course, there was the kohl. This was in fact galena – lead sulphite – ground into a fine powder and mixed with animal fat to give it an adherent quality. ‘The fat [was] applied to the face with a small twig or stick, or a stylus of wood, bone, or ivory. In ancient times the stylus had its little case, and stylus and case together made a dainty little “compact”,’ recounts Beauty Treatment in Ancient Egypt, a vintage pamphlet published by the Egyptian State Tourist Department. The treatment was said to ward off flies, protect the eyes from the sun and stimulate the lachrymal gland, promoting constant cleansing. But the way it was applied, elongating the line of the eye, is thought to have been a reference to Horus, the falcon-headed sky god, bringer of light.

The ancient Egyptians believed that not only cleanliness, but also beauty, was next to godliness. According to Dominique Paquet, author of the (1997) book Miroir, Mon Beau Miroir: Une histoire de la beauté, the Egyptian ruling classes felt that their ritual cleansing practices brought them closer to the pantheon of the gods and distinguished them from everyday citizens, who carried out far more limited beauty regimes ‘separated from any esoteric significance’. Skin tone took on a class connotation, as a woman with fair skin clearly led a very different life to that of the bronzed labourer. This distinction was to remain in place for centuries to come.

When an Egyptian lady of leisure rose in the morning, a languorous routine lay ahead of her. First she took a bath, washing herself with the multi-purpose cleaning agent netjeri – or natron, a mineral sourced from dry lake beds – blended with oil to form soap. The Egyptians also used natron in various dilutions to clean their teeth, antisepticize wounds and aid in the mummification process, owing to its antibacterial qualities (it is a mixture of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and salt).

The bath culminated in an exfoliating treatment using a paste called souabou, which contained clay and ash. Next came a massage with perfumed oil. Egyptians kept themselves fragrant in the heavy summer heat by applying an ointment of turpentine and incense. They also possessed various remedies for pimples, blemishes and even wrinkles. ‘For smoothing wrinkles… a compound of powdered alabaster, powdered natron, salt from the north and honey was employed,’ writes Pierre Montet in his (1980) guide to Everyday Life in Egypt in the Days of Ramesses the Great.

Egyptian women dusted their skin with ochre to give it a lighter, golden hue. As well as lining their eyes with kohl, they painted their eyelids with malachite, turquoise, terra cotta or charcoal. Their eyebrows were plucked and elongated, their lashes darkened. Their lips were reddened with carmine.

Hairstyles varied according to era and occasion. We know that women used metallic headbands and pins of ivory to control their locks. Pierre Montet insists that, in the time of Ramses, hair was cut short and tied into tiny plaits. Other sources suggest that women of the same period shaved their hair and wore perfumed wigs of silk, horsehair or indeed human hair. These hung in tresses or tight curls, augmented with strands of gold. The wealthy affected coronets and diadems of gold, malachite, turquoise, garnet and other precious substances. Jewellery in general was abundant, both for purely decorative purposes and in the form of amulets to ward off evil spirits.

Hands and feet were meticulously cared for: nails were polished or coloured with henna; the latter was probably also used to decorate skin. Wealthy households were equipped with a sophisticated array of grooming tools: combs and tweezers; hooked blades and knives for manicures and pedicures; razors that had evolved from sharpened stones into slivers of bronze. Circular discs of bronze were used as mirrors; copper, silver and gold mirrors have also been found.

Egypt became the hub of a veritable beauty trade. The highly successful ruler Hatshepsut (‘Foremost of Noble Ladies’), who reigned from 1479 to 1458 BC, was certainly aware of the importance of fragrances and cosmetics. In the 19th year of her reign, the pharaoh organized a trade mission to the semi-mythical Land of Punt. Already the subject of a folk tale in Hatshepsut’s day – a shipwrecked sailor had told of a fertile island ruled by a serpent god – its location has since faded into obscurity: scholars are now at odds about whether it was located in modern Somalia or in Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, Hatshepsut’s five-ship delegation made it across the Red Sea to Punt and was warmly welcomed. The boats returned laden with myrrh trees, fabled for their pleasing fragrance. Punt became a key trading post on a network set up by Hatshepsut. ‘Until the first century, Egypt held a quasi-monopoly on the transformation of raw ingredients,’ writes Dominique Paquet.

Like Cleopatra, Hatshepsut would not have viewed fragrances and cosmetics as mere tools of seduction. Beauty was an expression of divinity; perfume and powder were signifiers of status.

GREEK GYMNASIA AND ROMAN BATHS

While the Egyptians had a demonstrable weakness for bling, the Ancient Greeks had a more… Spartan attitude to beauty. There is some irony here, given that the word ‘cosmetics’ derives from the Greek kosmetike tekhne, meaning ‘the art of dress and adornment’.

The Greeks believed that beauty lay in natural harmony rather than the application of face paint. Indeed, make-up was banned in Sparta due to its association with courtesans. Tellingly, newly married women were permitted to wear a touch of make-up on their wedding night. This moment of shared pleasure was brief: Ancient Greece was a male-dominated society and from childhood women were exiled to the gynaeceum, a wing of the house reserved specifically for them. Grandmothers, married women, their daughters and female slaves all lived here, outside the mainstream of public life.

But if Greek society had a primitive attitude to sexual equality, it also had a highly developed body consciousness. Beauty, for the Ancient Greeks, was a matter of proportion. Men rigorously sculpted their bodies in gymnasia, even if they allowed themselves the luxury of a massage with perfumed oil afterwards. To judge from representations of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, the ideal woman had an oval face and an aquiline nose, a rounded yet youthfully firm body and prominent breasts. Her skin was expected to be of a uniform tone and – surprise, surprise – of surpassing pallor.

From the beginning of the 6th century before Christ, make-up techniques from the Orient began to filter into Athens. Women whitened their skin with ceruse – white lead – or powdered chalk, adding blusher in the form of crushed fig or mulberry. Eyelids were painted with saffron; eyebrows were plucked and blackened with kohl. Beauty preparations were passed down from mother to daughter.

Weakened by internal strife, Greece slowly ceded power to Rome. In the declining years of this great civilization, ordinary women felt able to leave their homes and move freely about the streets, so that others might appreciate their beauty.

The Romans themselves were no less stringent in their demands of women. The poet Ovid encouraged ladies to make the best of themselves in the last section of his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love). ‘Taking pains brings beauty: beauty neglected dies.’ However, he warned women to use make-up discreetly, as any hint of deception...