The Red Door: A history of Elizabeth Arden • Dave Lackie

Descripción

Elizabeth Arden was born Florence Nightingale Graham in 1878 to English/Scottish immigrant parents. Her mother died when she was only 6 years old and she was raised on a farm in Woodbridge Ontario by her siblings and her father. She grew up in poverty and never finished high school. But over the next 70 years she managed to create a modern cosmetics company and became the sole owner of a $60 million business. Florence Nightingale Graham had initially gone to school to become a nurse, but she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. She dropped out of nursing school and took a variety of jobs. In 1908 she moved to New York, where her brother lived. It was there that she took a clerical position at E.R. Squibb Pharmaceuticals company, where she learned about skincare. Although Florence was 30 at the time, due to her beautiful skin, she looked more like 20. She next took a job in a shop that specialized in facials, becoming a “treatment girl.” Her only qualifications were her beautiful skin and her healing hands, but she soon discovered that she had a natural aptitude for skin care and cosmetics. In the next year, she and a friend, Elizabeth Hubbard, opened […]