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London Review of Books

Rinse it in dead champagne subscriber-only content

Colm Tóibín

  • War Paint: Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry by Lindy Woodhead
  • Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight

The women who invented beauty came from far away. They lied about their ages and their origins and the source of their magic; their secrets were known only to certain chemists and secretaries and the maids and butlers who lived in fear of them, who survived long enough to tell and tell again the shocking truth, for example, that Elizabeth Arden, one of the world’s richest women, lined the inside of her shoes with newspaper, or that Helena Rubinstein’s lawyer chose ‘the budget option’ at the funeral parlour after her death until wiser counsel prevailed, or that Diana Vreeland’s hair was so hard that once, when her maid bumped into it with a tray, ‘it clinked.’

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Colm Tóibín is Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University. His essay in this issue is based on a lecture he gave at the University of Genoa’s Ford Madox Ford conference.