skin care products, elizabeth arden

A few weeks ago I was idly channel surfing one night and ran across a show on PBS. Not knowing what it was, my curiosity was piqued and I tuned in long enough to figure out what it was. I don't buy or have a subscription to TV Guide, and I was in a different room from my computer, so without getting off the couch and running upstairs, it was going to take a bit longer to figure out what I was watching. Within a few minutes I figured out I was watching a very interesting documentary about Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein called The Powder and the Glory, which was about how the two rivals started women's skin care products.

Since I tuned in about a half hour into the documentary, I missed the beginning where they talked about Elizabeth Arden's early life and her start in skin care products. I was reading up on Elizabeth Arden on wikipedia and found it interesting that Florence Nightingale Graham, more commonly known as Elizabeth Arden, originally went to nursing school. She dropped out though, and after moving to NY, worked as a bookkeeper for a pharmaceutical company. There she spent hours in the lab learning about skin care. It was after that job that she briefly went back to work for Eleanor Adair, who was an early beauty culturist, as a treatment girl.  That started her down the path to start one of the first companies that focused on creating skin care products and makeup.

To think, the early days of skin care products, at least for Elizabeth Arden, date back to 1909. The company and products have been around for so long that I never thought about how they started, until I saw that documentary. Right before leaving a recent job, I had been given a copy of Mary Kay's autobiography and found her story to be very interesting. Even someone like me, who doesn't use many skin care products, finds the history of the various skin care products companies interesting. Just think, those women who pioneered skin care products paved the way for the women and skin care products that came in the '70s, 80s, 90s and continue to emerge with new skin care products and the benefits women of all ages reap today.