Free Ugly Beauty by Ruth Brandon Page B

at the end of his life. “It’s the way I’m made. . . . You
can’t argue with the way you’re made.” 17 He
reduced production: the monthly loss fell to 30,000 francs, a level he could
bear. He reformulated the product, reorganized the factory, publicized the
improvements in the papers. Sales still did not rise.
    The problem Schueller faced was the problem all
cosmetics and toiletry manufacturers face—that their products are almost
indistinguishable, and that brand loyalty must somehow be engineered despite
this. Publicity is therefore all important. As Helena Rubinstein observed,
“There’s nothing like a clever stunt to get something off the ground.” Her
favorite campaign was the one for the fragrance “Heaven Sent,” when in the late
1940s thousands of pale-blue balloons were released over Fifth Avenue, each one
bearing a sample of the fragrance, with the tag: “A gift for you from heaven!
Helena Rubinstein’s new ‘Heaven Sent.’ ”
    Schueller, too, realized that he needed a really
huge publicity campaign. He returned to Bleustein and Radio Cité, and this time
he did not confine himself to mere jingles, but bought an entire program, the
extremely popular Crochet Radiophonique , which he
interspersed with catchy advertisements for Monsavon and sponsored singing
contests, broadcast live from different locations. For six months nothing
happened. Then sales suddenly took off. Monsavon took and retained first place
in soap sales. Schueller was vindicated.
    Sales of L’Oréal also rose during the 1920s, not
because of any advertising campaign but because of a new hairstyle: the bob. The
fashion for short hair began during World War I, when many women took jobs in
factories. The popular film stars Clara Bow and Louise Brooks were famously
bobbed, as was Coco Chanel, the up-and-coming fashion designer, who cut her hair
off after singeing it one day. Just as Chanel’s straight, comfortable clothes
meant the end of corsets, padding, and petticoats, so her new short hair did
away with laborious, long-drawn-out hair-washing and -drying sessions. Women
everywhere began to cut their hair. Like lipstick a few years earlier, the bob
became the symbol of a new freedom and independence. Men were horrified. “A
bobbed woman is a disgraced woman!” thundered one in outrage. “ . . .
How strangely ill at ease our poor shorn sisters would have been had they been
present in the Bethany home that day!” 18
    Schueller, too, was gloomy—not because of possible
troubles in Bethany, but because L’Oréal’s sales had always been predicated on
women having lots of hair to dye. He anticipated a catastrophic drop in demand.
He could not have been more wrong. Short hair needs frequent cutting, and only
men’s barbers had the appropriate skills. Faced with a female invasion, they
were hesitant at first, but soon reinvented themselves as hairdressing salons,
and flourished as never before. “Before the bob became the accepted style, there
were less than 11,000 beauty shops in America. . . . Today there are
more than 40,000 beauty shops in operation in America alone,” wrote hairdresser
George E. Darling in 1928. 19 And more
hairdressers meant more hair-dyeing outlets.
    Short hair did, however, present some difficulties
when it came to coloring. The bob was about modernity, and hence youth: a gray
bob looked anomalous. But a large proportion of short hair consists of roots, so
that any coloring must be frequently retouched. And this meant frequent dyeing
sessions, which were bad both for the hair and the pocket.
    One easy answer was to bleach. Schueller set to
work and produced L’Oréal Blanc. It quickly became the rage. Advertisements
throughout Europe and America were overtaken by a blond invasion. He soon
occupied the whole building in rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and opened, too, his
first proper factory, in rue Clavel, out in Paris’s 19th arrondissement. In
1929, for the first time, L’Oréal achieved revenues