The Business of Beauty: Gender and the Body in Modern London

The Business of Beauty is a unique exploration of the history of beauty, consumption, and business in Victorian and Edwardian London. Illuminating national and cultural contingencies specific to London as a global metropolis, it makes an important intervention by challenging the view of those who—like their historical contemporaries—perceive the 19th and early 20th centuries as devoid of beauty praxis, let alone a commercial beauty culture. Contrary to this perception, The Business of Beauty reveals that Victorian and Edwardian women and men developed a number of tacit strategies to transform their looks including the purchase of new goods and services from a heterogeneous group of urban entrepreneurs: hairdressers, barbers, perfumers, wigmakers, complexion specialists, hair-restorers, manicurists, and beauty “culturists.” Mining trade journals, census data, periodical print, and advice literature, Jessica P. Clark takes us on a journey through Victorian and Edwardian London’s beauty businesses, from the shady back parlors of Sarah “Madame Rachel” Leverson to the elegant showrooms of Eugène Rimmel into the first Mayfair salon of Mrs. Helena Titus, aka Helena Rubinstein. By revealing these stories, Jessica P. Clark revises traditional chronologies of British beauty consumption and provides the historical background to 20th-century developments led by Rubinstein and others. Weaving together histories of gender, fashion, and business to investigate the ways that Victorian critiques of self-fashioning and beautification defined both the buying and selling of beauty goods, this is a revealing resource for scholars, students, fashion followers, and beauty enthusiasts alike.

Table of Contents:
List of Plates List of Figures List of Maps Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. ’Backmewsy’ Beauty: Agnes Headman and Aimée Lloyd 3. Upstarts and Outliers: Sarah “Madame Rachel” Leverson 4. Mobilizing Men: Robert Douglas and H.P. Truefitt 5. Professionalizing Perfumery: Eugène Rimmel 6. Female Enterprise at the Fin-de-Siècle: Jeannette Pomeroy 7. From Beauty Culturist to Beauty Magnate: Helena Rubinstein Epilogue Appendix I Appendix II Notes Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jessica P. Clark is a historian of gender, urban space, and appearance in modern Britain, and an associate professor at Brock University, Canada.

Review :
Clark’s study is an elegant one, rich in detail with a sophisticated argument that compellingly encapsulates an important element of the beauty scene in a major global city ... Debates over beauty—currently a multibillion-dollar global industry incorporate and reveal issues of business, law, the body, morality, and labour in Britain and beyond, making The Business of Beauty a timely and important contribution. [T]his text complements existing work around fashion and modernity in London, with a timely focus on the impact that colonialism, nationalism, and gender based conventions in the nineteenth century have had on so many aspects of life. Clark’s fascinating study of beauty entrepreneurship in 19th-century London provides wonderful insights not only into Victorian and Edwardian business and marketing practices but also into the history of gender, self-fashioning, national identities, and urban cosmopolitanism. Through careful research, the author has unearthed a wide array of intriguing source material that will surprise and delight. In this lively and imaginative new study, Jessica Clark demonstrates how the Victorians invented a major beauty industry in the center of their capital city. By focusing on hairdressers and other beauty experts, Clark’s fascinating and entertaining new book establishes how London became the center of a new type of consumer culture, in which consumers who could afford it could transform their bodies and identities. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of London, gender and capitalism.