BECOMING ELIZABETH ARDEN

A lusciously long and lively biography follows beauty entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden's creation of an upscale empire that evolved and gained in strength over the decades from the early twentieth century on.

Cordery, whose previous subjects include Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Juliette Gordon Low, keeps the emphasis on Arden the businessperson, noting year by year her innovations and new projects, with an eye especially to the many ways she responded cleverly to the current conditions of the country and the world and ended up shaping them in the process. She was born in Canada in 1881, the daughter of immigrants from Great Britain; her mother died when she was six, leaving five children behind with a father whose work as an itinerant peddler barely kept them clothed and fed. Arden made her way to New York as soon as possible, following in the wake of an older brother. Before she turned 30, she had opened her own beauty salon. Determinedly upwardly mobile herself, she aimed her products and services at “wealthy white women and those who aspired to their status.” Because Arden left almost nothing in the way of personal writings or letters, Cordery constructs her portrait in part from the memories of others, but even more from the sometimes florid and always entertaining copy about her products that she, if she didn't write it herself, at least approved, with sentiments such as “the desire to be beautiful is older and stronger than the desire to be either modest or comfortable.” Cordery makes a convincing case that Arden was responsible for many of the innovations taken for granted in the beauty industry today: eyeshadow, pink satin-lined travel boxes, signature scents, the concept that makeup should complement clothing, week-long spa retreats, a dedicated exercise room in her salon, and more.

As beguiling as a day of luxury beauty treatments.