Description: For everyone who's ever slicked on lipstick, flirted with eye shadow, or browsed the bewildering array in any store's beauty de-partment, Color Stories offers an insider's view of all the brainstorming, bickering, and bitchery that go into those little sticks of color and pans of powder.Former beauty editor Mary Lisa Gavenas takes us behind the scenes during the nine months that culminate in the launch of a season's all-important "color stories." We discover how one shade becomes the "must have," why makeup artists never use the same products as the rest of us, and exactly how easy -- and impossible -- it is to start a million-dollar makeup line.Backstage at the runway shows, we're swept into the catty, chaotic work world of makeup mogul Bobbi Brown and supermodel Gisele Bündchen. At Estée Lauder headquarters, we see the achingly chic Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer spin societal trends into a lipstick lineup. We watch magazines cheat to make makeup work for layouts, find out how Cindy Crawford got to be worth every penny of her $10 million contract, and make the pilgrimage to Dallas as 35,000 of the Mary Kay faithful assemble for the fabled annual Seminar. Along the way, we also learn about marketing, media, and the manipulation of aesthetics, about the codification of physical beauty, and how this industry revolutionized the role of women in business.Through its often funny, sometimes poignant scenes of seduction, courtship, and consummation, Color Stories reveals why women become besotted by beauty products -- and why that love affair will never end.
Brief description: Mary Lisa Gavenas, author of Color Stories: Behind the Scenes in Americas Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry, has worked as both a beauty editor and scholar of the beauty industryespecially as it relates to cultural historyand was recently named a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. A former editor at Glamour, In Style, Mirabella, and a columnist at Elle, she was a member of the advisory board for The Dove Report: Challenging Beauty and has been cited as an expert source in media ranging from The New York Times to BBC-4. Visit her at the Gotham Center for New York City History: www.GothamCenter.org.
Review Quotes: Ruth P. Rubinstein, Ph.D.
Author of "Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture"
There is more to "Color Stories" than makeup. There are stories about women's complex interactions with other women and surprising observations about how the top cosmetics companies market their products. Gavenas shows us that what a woman wants from make-up can't always be quantified.