Beauty

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After leaving Vogue in 1946, Sarah worked as a beauty editor at Harper’s Bazaar until 1955. While at the magazine, she promoted the products of both Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, among others.

In 1957 Lever Brothers (now Unilever), a British manufacturer of beauty and personal-care products, introduced Dove, a soap containing skin moisturizer. Tom, together with Lever Brothers project leader Harold Grosowsky, was part of a team responsible for the uniquely shaped soap bar, which was intended to fit easily within the user’s hand.

Lee’s display added a sense of whimsy and decoration to the otherwise austere and minimal lobby of Lever House, a pioneering example of the International Style located on Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets.

Parfums Caron is a French perfume house founded in 1904 by Ernest Daltroff. A New York affiliate, "The Caron Corporation", in 1923 opened a store on Fifth Avenue and a factory outside the city, and, within two years, three quarters of Caron's total business was in the United States. In 1954, the company launched a new perfume Poivre.

Chicago-born socialite Harriet Hubbard Ayer established the nation’s first large-scale cosmetics company. Ayer’s eponymous company benefitted from—and helped to create—a new identity for American women, that of consumer. After becoming the nation’s first cosmetics mogul, Ayers wrote widely read articles and books about women’s health and beauty, and at the time of death in 1903 at the age of 54, was reputedly the highest paid woman journalist in the United States.

Coco Chanel founded her eponymous company in 1910 and launched her signature perfume in 1921. In a few years her products were being exported worldwide. In 1939, at the outbreak of war in Europe, Chanel closed her business, but she returned with a comeback collection in 1954. While French media were reserved because of her wartime collaboration with the Nazis, the American and British press praised the collection, bringing her work back into critical acclaim and commercial success.

Following in the footsteps of Harriet Hubbard Ayers, Helena Rubinstein was an early woman executive and built a cosmetics empire. As decorated by leading industrial designer Donald Deskey, Rubinstein’s sprawling triplex apartment at 625 Park Avenue featured her extensive art collection, including a portrait of her painted by the surrealist Pavel Tchelichev.  This photograph shows Sarah, Tom and their son Charles during a visit to Rubinstein's apartment.