War paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: their lives: their lives, their times, their rivalry

A fascinating dual biography of the women who founded today’s beauty industry They were both born in the nineteenth century in humble circumstances–Helena Rubinstein in an orthodox Jewish household in Kraków, Poland, Elizabeth Arden on a farm outside Toronto. But by the 1930s, they were bitter rivals in New York, the rulers of dueling international beauty empires that would forever change the way women thought about cosmetics, salons, and wrinkles. This riveting biography brings these two celebrated women to life, revealing the ruthless drive and innovative business strategies that took each to the top. Along the way, it offers an intriguing look at their personal idiosyncrasies (Rubinstein collected art, Arden racehorses), their checkered marriages, and the rarefied social milieu in which they both traveled. DURING THE EARLY EVENING of Friday 29 April, 1966, in an atmosphere of tense, almost palpitating excitement, over seven hundred people were gathered in the Madison Avenue premises of New York's prestigious Parke-Bernet Galleries. Chronicles the lives and achievements of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, focusing on how they help create the modern beauty industry and changed the way women think about cosmetics, salons, and wrinkles Dual biography of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, originators of the global beauty industry of the twentieth century