Ugly Beauty Read Online Free PDF

instead of
simply making clothes for individual women, and Helena realized that the couture
clients were also, potentially, hers. They needed to know how to make themselves
up in a way that would set off their new gowns to maximum effect, and she could
show them the way. In 1908 a herbal skin-products business came up for sale on
the rue Saint-Honoré. Helena snapped it up, together with its stock, and set
about its transformation. In 1911, she established her first factory, just
outside Paris at Saint-Cloud, and in 1912, she relocated to France. Her sister
Manka took over the London salon, while Helena, Titus, and the boys moved to
Montparnasse. Madame had had enough of London and nursery teas.
    In Paris, although aristocratic society was every
bit as closed and snobbish as in London, the raffish, the artistic, and the
talented constituted a glittering haute bohème . If
you were gifted enough—like Diaghilev, like Picasso, like Chanel—you were
lionized even though (like Diaghilev) you were perpetually broke, or (like
Chanel) notoriously a femme entretenue . And since
artists must sell their work in order to live, rich patrons in search of art to
buy could also become members of this charmed circle. Madame met everyone,
including Marcel Proust—“Nebbishy looking . . . He smelt of
moth-balls, wore a fur-lined coat to the ground—How could I have known that he
was going to be so famous?” He quizzed her about makeup. “Would a duchess use
rouge? Did demimondaines put kohl on their eyes? How should I know?” 37 She preferred Chanel, that rarity of
rarities—a self-made woman like herself. Why, Madame once asked the great
designer, had she never married the Duke of Westminster, who had been her lover
for so many years? “What, and become his third duchess? No,” returned Coco, “I
am Mademoiselle Chanel and I shall remain so, just as you will always be Madame
Rubinstein. These are our rightful titles.” 38
    Parisians, unlike Londoners, had no qualms about
being seen visiting a beauty salon. Particularly popular was Madame’s Swedish
masseuse, Ulla. “You know, it wasn’t just an ordinary massage, they did little
extra things,” Madame told Patrick O’Higgins; a hint of what those “extra
things” might have been is perhaps to be found in her 1915 request to her London
manageress, Rosa Hollay, for some small massage vibrators to be sent to New
York, where she had then just opened her first salon. 39 Colette, who had created a scandal when it emerged that she, not
her husband Willy, had written the sexy Claudine books, and who received free
treatments because of her publicity value, was particularly keen on Ulla’s
massages. “Massage is a woman’s sacred duty,” Colette announced after her first
visit. “The women of France owe it to themselves—without it, how can they hope to keep a lover!” 40 Ulla was soon fully booked, while Colette was so taken with the
idea of beauty salons that years later she opened one of her own. (It was not a
success. Her clients did not emerge noticeably beautified and did not
return.)
    In August of 1914 Madame’s European progress was
interrupted. War was declared—and who knew how it would affect business, or what
it would leave in its wake? Fortunately for her, however, one huge potential
market remained unaffected. America was booming, and quite remote from the
carnage. Titus held American nationality—and so, as his wife, did Helena.
Everything pointed westward. She made a quick swoop on her London bank,
appointed a new manageress, Rosa Hollay, to look after Grafton Street (where she
would soon be joined by Ceska), and in October 1914 sailed with Manka for New
York, leaving Titus and the two little boys in Paris to pack up the artworks and
follow in her wake.
    III
    I n
Australia and Europe, Madame had been a pioneer; in America she was pushing at
an open door. A touch of lipstick made a girl feel good. Above all, it made her
feel liberated. Participants in the