Never as in recent years has there been such a proliferation of video tutorials dedicated to make- up and skin-care thanks to technology, which has made it possible to share and disseminate one of the greatest passions of all (or almost all) of us women. Not to mention the careers that some beauty influencers are embarking on, making known the most effective cream rather than the mascara that gives the most intense look. We would be mistaken, however, if we thought that these figures were only daughters of the 2010s, indeed, going back to the early 1900s we can meet an ante-litteram beauty guru: Helena Rubinstein.

At a time when beauty salons were only frequented by actresses, dancers, singers, prostitutes and men looking for friends, starting from nothing, but armed with a lot of courage and focusing on vanity and luxury Helena opened the first beauty salons for respectable women.
Rubinstein, rebellious and intolerant of the poverty in which she lives in Poland, emigrates to Australia without speaking English, but gifted with intelligence, cunning and a beautiful complexion. It is thus that local women with very dry skin from working outdoors are impressed by her snow-white complexion, whose secret, according to Helena, is linked to a fictitious cream based on lanolin, mixed with water, lavender and other fragrances that softens the skin and is sold at eight times the production costs.

Thanks to this strategy she opened beauty salons in Melbourne, Sydney, and then landed in London already as a successful woman, driven by the conviction that beauty and love are the only forces capable of changing the world. The secret of her rise is scientific rigour at the service of beauty, creating an important connection between medicine and the beauty world: concentrates on analysing the various skin types and then suggesting the most suitable cream for each one, culminating in the creation of the ‘science of beauty’ concept. Another winning move was the decision to create a working staff of chemists and dermatologists always in white coats so as to reassure customers of the safety and efficacy of the products.

In 1915 she arrived in New York where her rivalry with her lifelong arch-enemy Elisabeth Arden began and although the two salons were very close the two women never met. In 1917, she began selling her products in other beauty centres by inventing “Beauty Day”, when for every purchase made, what became the must-have in perfumeries, samples, were handed out. Her visionary approach on the one hand and the rigour of science on the other allow her to build an empire, without ever forgetting that cosmetics must be a good within everyone’s reach: beauty as a personal conquest and as social redemption. After all, as she herself says: ‘there are no ugly women, only lazy women…’.