Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry

by Geoffrey Jones

The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms which have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us.This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today's global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty, and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and itsassociation with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world.Today globalization is changing the beauty industry again; its impact can be seen in a range of competing strategies. Global brands have swept into China, Russia, and India, but at the same time, these brands are having to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets are opened up worldwide.In the twenty first century, beauty is again being re-imagined anew.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Business, Feminism, Gender, Womens, Social Science

427 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Geoffrey G. Jones is a British-born business historian. He is currently Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School.

Reviews

[Martyna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well researched, however I did struggle with the overwhelming amount of dates and people thrown at me all at once. I feel like this book could be edited in a cleaner, easier to understand way. And I also feel like it could gloss over the chemical processes used to manufacture fragrances, soaps and then lotions and colour cosmetics, and how these evolved with time.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is "a history of the global beauty industry", which includes soaps, perfumes, hair care and coloring, skin lotions, etc. It roughly spans the 19th and 20th centuries, or from the time when the vast majority of people in Europe and America did not wash frequently and smelled very badly until the present, when the beauty industry is a sophisticated global industry commanding billions in sales and employing hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. It is a business in which many of the founding names of the perfume business are still on products for sale, and in which even basic commodity products such as bar soap have been repackaged and successfully sold as differentiated and highly priced products. It also places all those commercials we have all seen since childhood into a context that seems to make sense.

The book is very effective, in that it tells a series of plausible and interesting stories, backed up by numerous examples (and even lots of data in the appendices). While this is clearly a business history, it is not one of the "cleometric" histories that features formal modelling and regression analysis. It does not need such analysis to tell the basic stories.

This is an industry that is very different from most that are made the subject of histories. For more conventional industries, such as those focused on by Chandler, history was about the building of scale and scope economies through the development of mass markets. Firms that did this, also needed to develop managerial hierarchies and integrate their "value chains" of relations with suppliers and buyers. Where the right conditions prevailed, the firms that were successful first tended to survive, at least for a while until innovation weakened their head start and permitted new sets of innovators to catch up.

Beauty is different. It is not a typical manufactured product. For example, the commodity soap producers in Marseilles lost out to those who viewed soap as a differentiated product. For another example of the oddness of the industry, how do your build scale around a permanent wave hairdo, which may disappear in a short time with normal wear and washing? The focus of the industry is on selling aspirations and beauty norms and as such investment in brands and advertising become crucial. This is straightforward so far. Jones does a really good job at explaining the next phase of the industry after WWII -- how does one successfully build global scale with these sorts of products, all at a time when global norms of health and beauty are changing. The industry was first the center of a long series of diversifying acquisitions - which mostly failed. Then the big players started to realize how to systematically link brands (and megabrands) together to be successful. This involves research, branding, flexibility, and an adaptability to changing world market conditions. The second half of the book is the story of an entire industry figuring out what it want to be when it grows up and then sorting out how to do it. It is very thoughtful and very effective -- although by the end, the author is a bit short on analysis and a bit long on repeating what P&G and L'Oreal say they are doing. I guess that it understandable - since we don't really know how current strategies will ultimately turn out -- a chapter too far I guess.

That is all minor, however. This type of history runs the risk of being either an industry or company hagiography on the one hand or a critical diatribe on the other. Jones' book balances his stories nicely, avoids excessive excess, and is the better for doing so. In a genre that is sometimes a bit boring, this was an interesting book

[Mallory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first want to say that this author has excellent credentials and has absolutely done his research. This is an excellent corporate history of the industry. That said, this is one of the most boring books I've read in several years. It really is a shame because the subject is so interesting, but the way the author presented information is really terrible.

[Sterling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really in-depth book that continues the author’s writings and research into the history of beauty. This book isn’t a quick read (this is coming from someone who reads everyday and I’m an art historian). There is a lot of information to take in and it’s great with connecting the dots between well known brands from the beauty industry. It also includes some of the health industry, fragrance industry, etc.

[Raivis Spalvēns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samērā jēdzīgs atskats industriālās skaistumkopšanas vēsturē 200 gadu garumā. Grāmatu var lasīt kā romānu, kur galvenie varoņi ir šais laikos zināmi zīmoli – to rašanos 19.gs. vidū, saistību ar aristokrātiju un koloniālismu, likstām un zaudējumiem divos pasaules karos, gana komplicētajai komercializācijai un apjukumam 20. gs. vidū un jēgas meklējumiem 21. gs.

[Alberto Tebaldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting story of the powerful beauty industry ..... more powerful than what I'd have expected

[Smelly Pumpkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for school, had to write a 7 minute oral on issues within the cosmetics industry I hate my life.

[Reni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched. Banyak banget datanya. Tidak cocok dibaca untuk waktu bersenang2.

[Valia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Великолепная книга гарвардского профессора истории бизнеса об индустрии красоты.

Благодаря людям, создавшим эту индустрию, средства гигиены и парфюмерия стали доступны не только очень богатым людям, а декоративная косметика — не только актерам и проституткам.

Но вот что меня действительно подкупило — это их талант продавать не только бренды, но и какую-то совершенно нереальную фигню типа кремов для отбеливания кожи, автозагаров и вагинальных дезодорантов. Неудивительно, что эти люди еще и постоянно наживали невероятные кучи денег! И даже две мировые войны и многочисленные финансовые кризисы не смогли их остановить. Впечатляет!

Написано живенько, есть иллюстрации :)

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found parts of this book interesting and enlightening, particularly in the first section. Ultimately though I was bored by long sections detailing the evolution of specific corporations and disappointed by the author's naive optimism regarding the social function of the beauty industry. It's more a recounting of historical events than any kind of in-depth or insightful analysis, and a corporate rather than social history at that.

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A current and in-depth look at the beauty industry from it's foundations to today. This book offers groundbreaking looks into the advertising and business methods that built modern beauty. It is a much of a reference as a great historical read. This book was my bible in writing my thesis about organic beauty.

[Henriette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A learned and informative book with a focus informed by a social Scientific and historical approach, employing the language of economics and displaying an understanding of cooperative megabusiness. I enjoyed getting the stories and history of the beauty industry's brand building.