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Pioneers of the Beauty Industry
Words Shemaiah Gold
Beauty editor Shemaiah Gold, talks key figures who shaped the beauty industry we see today.
Credit: DELBO ANDREA / Shutterstock.comEstée Lauder (Josephine Esther Mentzer)
The face behind the multi-billionaire pound beauty company Estée Lauder and she co-founded the business with Joseph Lauder. Lauder was born in Queens, NYC and both her parents were Hungarian-Jewish Immigrants. She started her journey by helping her uncle's chemistry business, selling beauty products, lotions and fragrances, he also taught her how to wash her face and do facial massages. The better she got at selling these products, the more relationships she built and in 1953 introduced her first fragrance 'Youth-Dew', a bath oil that doubled as a perfume. In the first year, it sold 50,000 bottles and by 1984, the figure had risen to 150million.
Madam C.J Walker
After watching her docs-series on Netflix based on her life and the events in the lead up to her becoming one of the first self-made millionaires in the beauty game, I felt impelled to dig further in to the life of Madam C.J Walker and how she did it. One of the main reasons why her story is so inspiring is because of the fact that she became extremely successful in a time where it looked impossible, as a black woman in living in Delta, Louisiana , the first in her family to be free-born.
Both her parents were slaves, working on a cotton plantation near Delta, Louisiana. She was inspired to create the 'hair grower' as part of the 'walker system' - the business empire first sellingproducts directly to black women, then employing 'beauty culturalists' to hand-sell her products after experiencing a scalp disorder where she lost a lot of her own hair which is no surprise considering the tough life she had prior to inventing her hair care line. What impresses me the most about C.J Walker is her resilience, drive and confidence, she was confident enough to make herself the face of her products knowing that as a dark skin woman with course hair there would be the potential that they may not sell as a result. She was the first to re-invent what it means to be beautiful in a time where there seemed to only be space for the 'white face, caucasian hair and skinny body'. I think she just believed enough to make something happen from nothing and that's where her true power laid.
Martha Matilda Harper
Last but not least, the American businesswomen, entrepreneur and inventor born in Oakville, Canada. Martha launched modern retail franchising and then built an international network of 500 franchised hair salons that emphasise healthy hair care. However, before she got to this point she worked as a domestic servant for 25 years whilst saving enough money to start working full-time producing a hair tonic she invented. Coming from a background with a lack of education but realising the hair products on the market did more harm than good she used her life savings to invest in this hair tonic and it was a great success. What I loved about Harper, was the fact that she was all for women and she didn't hide it! Every salon franchise was owned by a woman and the first 100 shops only went to poor women with the same background to her which she trained.
At the height of its success, her company had 500 franchises, she invented reclining shampoo chairs and produced a full line of hair care and beauty products. Among the Harper customers were British royalty.
