I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. —Hamlet, speaking to Ophelia
Only one other? Perhaps in Elizabethan times, when cosmetics were just becoming popular. But a 1978 American Ophelia can make herself a different face for each passing mood, each fantasized role, even each time of day. At the office, she can sport the fresh, "natural" look of the career woman, by using a dozen shades and tints, from eye liner to translucent lip gloss, all supposed to make her appear as if she were wearing no makeup at all. Then, in the evening, she can switch to smoky mauve eye shadow and dark red lipstick touched with midnight blue, calculated to give her a mysterious aura that will stand out under disco lights and smite her dancing partners with an advanced case of Saturday Night Fever.
To achieve these and other appearances, the modern woman can select from an array of contouring creams, blushes, enamels, colors and scents that would have staggered Ophelia or even her own mother, who got by with only basic lipstick and powder. A big cosmetics company today produces around 2,500 shades of nail polish, many with matching lipsticks, of course. Plus different perfumes, colognes, toilet waters and other fragrances to be worn at the supermarket, on the tennis court, when running—yes, when running—when dining, when saying goodnight to her Sweet Prince. Plus unnumbered shampoos, moisturizers, eye shadows, lip glosses, mascaras and, not least, cleansers to take the stuff off, all adding up to...
Well, to a turbulent industry that takes fish scales, seaweed, ambergris, flower oils, sulfides, acids and other sometimes unglamorous ingredients, mixes them in endlessly varied combinations, whips them with imaginative advertising and promotion, and winds up selling some $10 billion worth of hopes and dreams each year. It is a bruisingly competitive business that requires little capital to enter but plenty of moxie to survive in. An entrepreneur with creative flair can still rise fast, though that is getting harder all the time, and an established company can go downhill with blinding speed after the founding genius dies (Helena Rubinstein and Max Factor have been absorbed by conglomerates, and are in varying degrees of trouble now). Through all the turmoil, a few cosmetics firms have catered to the narcissistic tastes of the "me generation" skillfully enough to keep growing rapidly; and one, Revlon, Inc., has developed into a General Motors of beauty.
In its kaleidoscopically changing industry, Revlon stands out for at least two reasons. While most of its rivals concentrate on either class or mass markets, Revlon sells cosmetics, toiletries and fragrances in every price range through every type of retail outlet, from the most exclusive department stores and beauty salons to the most crowded discount houses (it is even test-selling a few products in supermarkets). Equally important, it has survived triumphantly the moment of maximum danger for a cosmetics company: the death of the founder. The test came four years ago with the terminal illness of Charles Revson, a free-spending, profane, tyrannical but occasionally lovable entrepreneur who had built Revlon largely on