Helena Rubinstein
Encyclopedia
Helena Rubinstein a Polish
born Australian-American business magnate
. She is the founder and eponym
of Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, which made her one of the world's richest women.
. For a short time, she studied medicine in Switzerland.
in 1902, with no money and little English. Her stylish clothes and milky complexion did not pass unnoticed among the town's ladies, however, and she soon found enthusiastic buyers for the jars of beauty cream in her luggage. Spotting a market, she began to make her own. Fortunately, a key ingredient was readily at hand.
Coleraine
, in Western Victoria, where her uncle was a shopkeeper, might have been an "awful place" but it did not lack of that ingredient. Sheep, some 75 million of them, were the wealth of the nation and the Western District's vast mobs of merinos produced the finest wool in the land, secreting abundant quantities of a grease, chemically known as lanolin, in the process. To disguise this essential component of her product's pungent odour, Rubinstein experimented with lavender
, pine bark and water lilies
.
She also managed to fall out with her uncle. After a stint as a bush governess, she got a job as a waitress at the Winter Garden tearooms in Melbourne. There, she found an admirer willing to stump up the funds to launch her Crème Valaze, supposedly including herbs imported "from the Carpathian Mountains". Costing ten pence and selling for six shillings, it walked off the shelves as fast as she could pack it in pots. Now calling herself Helena, Rubinstein could soon afford to open a salon in fashionable Collins Street, selling glamour as a science to clients whose skin was "diagnosed" and a suitable treatment "prescribed".
Sydney was next, and within five years Australian operations were profitable enough to finance a Salon de Beauté Valaze in London. As such, Rubinstein formed one of the world’s first cosmetic companies. Her business enterprise proved immensely successful and later in life she used her enormous wealth to support charitable institutions in the fields of education, art and health.
Diminutive at 4 ft. 10 in. (147 cm), she rapidly expanded her operation. In 1908, her sister Ceska assumed the Melbourne shop's operation, when, with $100,000, Rubinstein moved to London and began what was to become an international enterprise. (Women at this time could not obtain bank loans, so the money was her own.)
and hired Samuel Putnam
to translate famous model Kiki
's memoirs.
Rubinstein threw lavish dinner parties and became known for apocryphal quips, such as when an intoxicated French ambassador expressed vitriol toward Edith Sitwell
and her brother Sacheverell
: “Vos ancêtres ont brûlé Jeanne d’Arc!” Rubinstein, who knew little French, asked a guest what the ambassador had said. “He said, ‘Your ancestors burned Joan of Arc
.’ ” Rubinstein replied, "Well, someone had to do it."
At another fête, Marcel Proust
asked her what makeup a duchess might wear. She summarily dismissed him because "he smelt of mothballs." Rubinstein recollected later, "How was I to know he was going to be famous?"
, she and Titus moved to New York City, where she opened a cosmetics salon in 1915, the forerunner of a chain throughout the country. This was the beginning of her vicious rivalry with the other great lady of the cosmetics industry, Elizabeth Arden
. Both Rubinstein and Arden, who died within 18 months of each other, were social climbers. And they were both keenly aware of effective marketing and luxurious packaging, the attraction of beauticians in neat uniforms, the value of celebrity endorsements, the perceived value of overpricing and the promotion of the pseudo-science of skincare.
From 1917, Rubinstein took on the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of her products. The "Day of Beauty" in the various salons became a great success. The purported portrait of Rubinstein in her advertising was of a middle-age mannequin with a gentile appearance.
In 1928, she sold the American business to Lehman Brothers
for $7.3 million, ($88 million in 2007). After the arrival of the Great Depression
, she bought back the nearly worthless stock for less than $1 million and eventually turned the shares into values of multimillion dollars, establishing salons and outlets in almost a dozen U.S. cities. Her subsequent spa at 715 Fifth Avenue included a restaurant, a gymnasium and rugs by painter Joan Miró
. She commissioned Salvador Dalí
to design a powder compact as well a portrait of herself.
Freed of her former marriage vows, in 1938 Helena readily married Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (1895–1955), whose somewhat clouded materlineal claim to Georgian
nobility, as that of Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (sometimes spelled Courielli-Tchkonia; born at Georgia, 18 February 1895, died at New York City 21 November 1955), stemmed from his having been born a member of the untitled noble Tchkonia family of Guria, enticing the ambitious young man to appropriate the genuine title of his grandmother, born Princess Gourielli.
Self-styled Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, was 23-years younger than Rubinstein. Eager for a regal title to call her own, Rubinstein pursued the handsome youth avidly; coming to name a male cosmetics line after her youthful prized catch. Some have claimed that the marriage was a marketing ploy, including Rubinstein's being able to pass herself off as Helena Princess Gourielli.
A multimillionaire of contrasts, Rubinstein took a bag lunch to work and was very frugal in many matters but bought top-fashion clothing and valuable fine art and furniture. Concerning art, she founded the respectable Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv
and in 1957 she established the Helena Rubinstein travelling art scholarship in Australia. In 1953, she established the philanthropic Helena Rubinstein Foundation to provide funds to organizations specializing in health, medical research and rehabilitation as well as to the America Israel Cultural Foundation
and scholarships to Israelis.
In 1959, Rubinstein represented the U.S. cosmetics industry at the American National Exhibition in Moscow
.
A £300 annual Rubinstein Prize was awarded for portraits by Australian artsts from 1958. Prizewinners included Frank Hodgkinson
1958; Charles Blackman
1960; William Boissevain
1961; Margaret Olley
1962; Vladas Meskenas
1963; Judy Cassab
1964, 1965; Jack Carington Smith 1966.
Called "Madame" by her employees, she eschewed idle chatter, continued to be active in the corporation throughout her life, even from her sick bed, and staffed the company with her relatives.
. Some of her estate, including African and fine art, Lucite furniture, and overwrought Victorian furniture upholstered in purple, was auctioned in 1966 at the Park-Bernet Galleries in New York.
One of Rubinstein's numerous mantras was: "There are no ugly women, only lazy ones." A scholarly study of her exclusive beauty salons and how they blurred and influenced the conceptual boundaries at the time among fashion, art galleries, the domestic interior and versions of modernism is explored by Marie J. Clifford (Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 38). A feature-length documentary film
, The Powder and the Glory (2009) by Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman, details the rivalry between Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden
.
Her methodology has been described thus:
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
born Australian-American business magnate
Business magnate
A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...
. She is the founder and eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
of Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, which made her one of the world's richest women.
Early life
Rubinstein was born Chaja Rubinstein, the eldest of eight children, to Augusta Gitte (Gitel) Scheindel Silberfeld Rubinstein and Naftali Herz Horace Rubinstein; he was a shopkeeper in KrakówKraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
. For a short time, she studied medicine in Switzerland.
Move to Australia
Rubinstein arrived in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1902, with no money and little English. Her stylish clothes and milky complexion did not pass unnoticed among the town's ladies, however, and she soon found enthusiastic buyers for the jars of beauty cream in her luggage. Spotting a market, she began to make her own. Fortunately, a key ingredient was readily at hand.
Coleraine
Coleraine, Victoria
Coleraine is a town in Victoria, Australia on the Glenelg Highway, west of the state capital, Melbourne and north-west of Hamilton in the Shire of Southern Grampians local government area. It was named after the town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland...
, in Western Victoria, where her uncle was a shopkeeper, might have been an "awful place" but it did not lack of that ingredient. Sheep, some 75 million of them, were the wealth of the nation and the Western District's vast mobs of merinos produced the finest wool in the land, secreting abundant quantities of a grease, chemically known as lanolin, in the process. To disguise this essential component of her product's pungent odour, Rubinstein experimented with lavender
Lavender
The lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. An Old World genus, distributed from Macaronesia across Africa, the Mediterranean, South-West Asia, Arabia, Western Iran and South-East India...
, pine bark and water lilies
Nymphaeaceae
Nymphaeaceae is a family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called water lilies and live in freshwater areas in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains eight genera. There are about 70 species of water lilies around the world. The genus...
.
She also managed to fall out with her uncle. After a stint as a bush governess, she got a job as a waitress at the Winter Garden tearooms in Melbourne. There, she found an admirer willing to stump up the funds to launch her Crème Valaze, supposedly including herbs imported "from the Carpathian Mountains". Costing ten pence and selling for six shillings, it walked off the shelves as fast as she could pack it in pots. Now calling herself Helena, Rubinstein could soon afford to open a salon in fashionable Collins Street, selling glamour as a science to clients whose skin was "diagnosed" and a suitable treatment "prescribed".
Sydney was next, and within five years Australian operations were profitable enough to finance a Salon de Beauté Valaze in London. As such, Rubinstein formed one of the world’s first cosmetic companies. Her business enterprise proved immensely successful and later in life she used her enormous wealth to support charitable institutions in the fields of education, art and health.
Diminutive at 4 ft. 10 in. (147 cm), she rapidly expanded her operation. In 1908, her sister Ceska assumed the Melbourne shop's operation, when, with $100,000, Rubinstein moved to London and began what was to become an international enterprise. (Women at this time could not obtain bank loans, so the money was her own.)
Marriage and children
In 1908, she married American journalist Edward William Titus in London. They had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus (London, December 12, 1909–New York, June 18, 1989) and Horace Titus (London, April 23, 1912–New York, May 18, 1958). They eventually moved to Paris where she opened a salon in 1912. Her husband helped with writing the publicity and set up a small publishing house, published Lady Chatterley's LoverLady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
and hired Samuel Putnam
Samuel Putnam
Samuel Putnam was an American translator and scholar of Romance languages.His most famous work is his 1949 English translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote...
to translate famous model Kiki
Kiki
Kiki is a given name, surname or nickname; for example, in Spanish, Kiki, Kike , or Kiko are forms of a nickname for Enrique , or Kika for the female Enriqueta . In Greek it is a shortening of Vasiliki . Other spellings include Quiqui, Quique...
's memoirs.
Rubinstein threw lavish dinner parties and became known for apocryphal quips, such as when an intoxicated French ambassador expressed vitriol toward Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...
and her brother Sacheverell
Sacheverell Sitwell
Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, 6th Baronet CH was an English writer, best known as an art critic and writer on architecture, particularly the baroque. He was the younger brother of Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell....
: “Vos ancêtres ont brûlé Jeanne d’Arc!” Rubinstein, who knew little French, asked a guest what the ambassador had said. “He said, ‘Your ancestors burned Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
.’ ” Rubinstein replied, "Well, someone had to do it."
At another fête, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
asked her what makeup a duchess might wear. She summarily dismissed him because "he smelt of mothballs." Rubinstein recollected later, "How was I to know he was going to be famous?"
Move to the United States
At the outbreak of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, she and Titus moved to New York City, where she opened a cosmetics salon in 1915, the forerunner of a chain throughout the country. This was the beginning of her vicious rivalry with the other great lady of the cosmetics industry, Elizabeth Arden
Elizabeth Arden
Florence Nightingale Graham , who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian-American businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States. At the peak of her career, she was one of the wealthiest women in the world.-Biography:Arden was born in 1884 at Woodbridge, Ontario,...
. Both Rubinstein and Arden, who died within 18 months of each other, were social climbers. And they were both keenly aware of effective marketing and luxurious packaging, the attraction of beauticians in neat uniforms, the value of celebrity endorsements, the perceived value of overpricing and the promotion of the pseudo-science of skincare.
From 1917, Rubinstein took on the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of her products. The "Day of Beauty" in the various salons became a great success. The purported portrait of Rubinstein in her advertising was of a middle-age mannequin with a gentile appearance.
In 1928, she sold the American business to Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
for $7.3 million, ($88 million in 2007). After the arrival of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, she bought back the nearly worthless stock for less than $1 million and eventually turned the shares into values of multimillion dollars, establishing salons and outlets in almost a dozen U.S. cities. Her subsequent spa at 715 Fifth Avenue included a restaurant, a gymnasium and rugs by painter Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
. She commissioned Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
to design a powder compact as well a portrait of herself.
Divorce and remarriage
In 1937, Rubinstein divorced Titus after a contentious marriage marked by his infidelities.Freed of her former marriage vows, in 1938 Helena readily married Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (1895–1955), whose somewhat clouded materlineal claim to Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
nobility, as that of Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (sometimes spelled Courielli-Tchkonia; born at Georgia, 18 February 1895, died at New York City 21 November 1955), stemmed from his having been born a member of the untitled noble Tchkonia family of Guria, enticing the ambitious young man to appropriate the genuine title of his grandmother, born Princess Gourielli.
Self-styled Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, was 23-years younger than Rubinstein. Eager for a regal title to call her own, Rubinstein pursued the handsome youth avidly; coming to name a male cosmetics line after her youthful prized catch. Some have claimed that the marriage was a marketing ploy, including Rubinstein's being able to pass herself off as Helena Princess Gourielli.
A multimillionaire of contrasts, Rubinstein took a bag lunch to work and was very frugal in many matters but bought top-fashion clothing and valuable fine art and furniture. Concerning art, she founded the respectable Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
and in 1957 she established the Helena Rubinstein travelling art scholarship in Australia. In 1953, she established the philanthropic Helena Rubinstein Foundation to provide funds to organizations specializing in health, medical research and rehabilitation as well as to the America Israel Cultural Foundation
America Israel Cultural Foundation
The America Israel Cultural Foundation was established in 1939 to support the growth and development of Israel. Originally established as the American Fund for Palestinian Institutions, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 the name was changed to the American Fund for Israeli...
and scholarships to Israelis.
In 1959, Rubinstein represented the U.S. cosmetics industry at the American National Exhibition in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
A £300 annual Rubinstein Prize was awarded for portraits by Australian artsts from 1958. Prizewinners included Frank Hodgkinson
Frank Hodgkinson
Frank Hodgkinson AM was a noted Australian printmaker, painter and graphic artist.-Life:Hodgkinson was educated at Fort Street High School and after leaving began work as a commercial artist and newspaper illustrator...
1958; Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman is one of the best known Australian artists still living today, especially for the famous Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland series of the 1950s...
1960; William Boissevain
William Boissevain
William 'Wim' Boissevain is an Australian painter of Dutch extraction born Willem Geoffrey Boissevain in New York, son of Gideon Walrave 'Gi' Boissevain who was in the Dutch diplomatic service....
1961; Margaret Olley
Margaret Olley
Margaret Hannah Olley AC was an Australian painter. She was the subject of more than 90 solo exhibitions.Margaret Olley was born in Lismore, New South Wales. She attended Somerville House in Brisbane during her high school years...
1962; Vladas Meskenas
Vladas Meskenas
Vladas Meškėnas is an Australian–Lithuanian artist, who has been a frequent Archibald Prize finalist.He moved to Sydney, Australia, as a displaced person in 1949 and there joined the Sydney Lithuanian artists' group "Aitvaras", established in 1950, which included Jurgis Bistrickas, Henry...
1963; Judy Cassab
Judy Cassab
Judy Cassab CBE AO is an Australian painter. She has twice won the Archibald Prize.Judy Cassab was born Judit Kaszab in Vienna, Austria in 1920 to Hungarian parents...
1964, 1965; Jack Carington Smith 1966.
Called "Madame" by her employees, she eschewed idle chatter, continued to be active in the corporation throughout her life, even from her sick bed, and staffed the company with her relatives.
Death and legacy
Mme. Rubinstein died April 1, 1965 and was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in QueensQueens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
. Some of her estate, including African and fine art, Lucite furniture, and overwrought Victorian furniture upholstered in purple, was auctioned in 1966 at the Park-Bernet Galleries in New York.
One of Rubinstein's numerous mantras was: "There are no ugly women, only lazy ones." A scholarly study of her exclusive beauty salons and how they blurred and influenced the conceptual boundaries at the time among fashion, art galleries, the domestic interior and versions of modernism is explored by Marie J. Clifford (Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 38). A feature-length documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, The Powder and the Glory (2009) by Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman, details the rivalry between Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden
Elizabeth Arden
Florence Nightingale Graham , who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian-American businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States. At the peak of her career, she was one of the wealthiest women in the world.-Biography:Arden was born in 1884 at Woodbridge, Ontario,...
.
Her methodology has been described thus:
- She was "the first self-made female millionaire, an accomplishment she owed primarily to publicityPublicityPublicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people , goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment.From a marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion which is one...
savvy. She knew how to advertise—using 'fear copy with a bit of blah-blah'—and introduced the concept of 'problem' skin types. She also pioneered the use of pseudosciencePseudosciencePseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
in marketing, donning a lab coat in many advertisements, despite the fact that her only training had been a two-month tour of European skin-care facilities. She knew how to manipulate consumer's statusSocial statusIn sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
anxietyAnxietyAnxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, as well: If a product faltered initially, she would hike the priceValue-based pricingValue based pricing, or Value optimized pricing is a business strategy. It sets selling prices primarily, but not exclusively, on the perceived value to the customer, rather than on the actual cost of the product, the market price, competitors prices, or the historical price.The goal of value-based...
to raise the perceived valueValue (marketing)The value of a product is the mental estimation a consumer makes of it. Formally it may be conceptualized as the relationship between the consumer's perceived benefits in relation to the perceived costs of receiving these benefits...
."