By Drusilla Beyfus
Published: 12:01AM BST 10 May 2008
Between 1962 and 1987 the 'Estée Lauder woman' was exemplified by a succession of five models in a groundbreaking advertising campaign shot by Victor Skrebneski. Twenty-one years on, Drusilla Beyfus talks to the key players
The reissue of the book Five Beautiful Women is a reminder of an advertising campaign that broke new ground, ran for 25 years and helped to shape the fortunes of Estée Lauder, the founder of the US-based cosmetics empire currently quoted as worth $5 billion. It was an exercise in inspired puffery. Focused on a series of high-glamour black-and-white photographs of models posing in ritzy or romantic surroundings, the campaign sold Lauder's products in newspapers and magazines from 1962 to 1987.
In the 1960s the major beauty houses usually diffused their advertising by using a variety of images shot by different photographers. Estée Lauder had her reasons for parting company with that practice. Together with the brand's New York advertising agency, AC&R, they dreamt up the concept of 'the Estée Lauder woman'. Lauder comments in her autobiography, 'She was one kind of woman, always, even though she could be rich, poor, younger or older. She was classic. That never changed.'
A decision was taken to personify the brand's products in the likeness of this fiction. The campaign would use the same model in its advertising photography over a run of years. Each of the exemplars projected a different kind of physical beauty, though they had much in common. Caucasian women, they are slender but not excessively thin, graced with elegantly long necks, trusty high cheek bones and classically regular facial features. Although a smiling face is thought of as being part and parcel of US product advertising, few of the Lauder lovelies succumb to a parting of the lips. A characteristic expression is of cool don't-mess-with-me reserve.
Consistency was essential in the visuals and this was the responsibility of the Chicago-based photographer Victor Skrebneski, who was assigned to shoot the pictures throughout. In an interview in Town & Country magazine, he said, 'I love to design photographs, to consider the proportions of the figure, the space around it, the edge of the picture.' Among his best-known sitters are Audrey Hepburn, Orson Welles, Vanessa Redgrave, Fred Astaire, and among younger members, Jasmine Guinness.
Owing more than a nod to Hollywood lighting effects and film-still poses, the shoots went flat out for the aspirational. Whether location or studio, a whole slew of fashions in living were called on and called in: impressive houses, designer dresses from the likes of Oscar de la Renta, Halston and Valentino, remarkable accessories and interior design details with an emphasis on collector's level art, both antique and contemporary. In my telephone interview with Skrebneski, he recalled, 'The photographs caused a lot of public comment. People were interested in everything in the picture. The designers whose dresses were shown did quite a lot of business and I was always being asked where we had got hold of an item of decoration.'
Interestingly for such ephemera, the portfolio had an afterlife. It was thought that the pictures communicated more than segments of powder and paint time. A selection of the shots was first published in hardback in 1987 with an introduction by Hubert de Givenchy.
Despite the fact that no reference is made in the book to the products that the shots promoted, the pictures tell the story of changes in beauty trends. Broadly, the line travels from one look as the look of the day to chameleon-like choice. Phyllis Connor (1962-67) has broomstick Elizabeth Taylor eyelashes, pale lips outlined and neat hair; Karen Harris (1967-1970) is given panda-like eye make-up, fine arched brows and a beehive; Karen Graham (1970-1980) features naturalistic make-up, a clean brow and softly curled hair; Shaun Casey (1981-1985) advances the cause of naturalism illustrating a light blusher, soft lipline and gentle eyeliner; Willow Bay (1985-1987) introduces many different appearances from high-style, grown-up grooming to the illusion of a look that is nature's own.
Graham features on the cover and has the greatest number of portraits in the book. According to Lauder's reminiscences she was picked from more than a thousand faces on the grounds that she possessed 'that indefinable air known as class'. As it happened this chimed with Graham's own modelling ambitions. She told me, 'The image I was trying to create for myself as a model was one of classic elegance and all those settings fed right into the persona I was working towards.' In Skrebneski's view, Graham had 'the young Bette Davis look. The wonderful thing about her was that she always knew what to do.'
'Victor and I had similar goals,' Graham told me. 'I felt confident with him. No matter what I was wearing or what pose, I knew he would take a photograph of me that I would be pleased with. There was an era even in beauty photography that was showing dark shadows and lighting that was anything but flattering to the model. Victor was never caught up in that track of decadent realism and the druggy look.' In retrospect, she believes that the factor that dates the pictures most tellingly is the hairstyles.
None the less, critics may argue that the set-piece glamour poses and lush consumerism of the pictures amount to little more than conventional retro. Certainly the shots are distant from what was going on in the creative fields in beauty and style photography, particularly as far as the portrayal of women's sexuality was concerned. It was an era when metaphors for femininity and stylishness took on a harder edge and many limits went out of the studio window.
Rising above such esoteric considerations, the Estée Lauder woman lives on most prominen tly in the real-life persona of Aerin Lauder, the granddaughter of Estée. Aerin, born in 1970, is now the head of global advertising for the company and recently appeared in the promotional images for its new fragrance, Private Collection. Shot by the British photographer Craig McDean in a high-glam style, the image has many affinities with the Beauties shots. As to the attribute of feminine beauty that the book's title celebrates, surely little has changed in terms of its power since Helen of Troy, as the recent Carla Bruni-Sarkozy effect suggests.
No comments:
Post a Comment