Beauty Appetite

Some thirty years ago, the widow Angeline Philippe looked hard at the small boy who stood beside her. She and her husband had named him Louis. By itself, Louis was perhaps the commonest name in all Paris, but Louis Philippe smacked of kingship. With such a name, a young Parisian should go far. It was unfortunate that she had scarcely enough money to clothe or feed him.

But the widow Angeline was resourceful. While she put little store by such things herself, she knew that Parisian women loved to soften their skins with greasy pastes, loved to create an artificial bloom to replace the natural color which had faded. The widow Angeline bent over the kitchen stove, mixing potions, whipping them into creams. Each ingredient she showed to the round-eyed, intelligent boy. Thus Louis Philippe was trained to become, not a king, but a maker of cosmetics.

In 1910, the widow Angeline and Son Louis embarked for America, settled in Manhattan. When a year had passed, they found they had saved a capital of $100. Proudly, they formalized their little business, became Louis Philippe, Inc. Their first trademarked line they named the "Angelus," the tribute of a dutiful son to the widow Angeline. By 1914, the American public was beginning to be cosmetic-conscious. Cosmetic makers, among them the Philippes, valued their products in that year at $25,514,352.

Last week, the widow Angeline, 72, still shuffled about the factory in a faded blue denim dress, big, loose-fitting shoes. Each day at noon she bent over her stove, but she was preparing eggs, not unguents. To her alone is entrusted the task of cooking lunch for Son Louis, now a fattish little man with the traditional French pointed mustache. The widow Angeline has never troubled to learn English, but she knows that Son Louis has made money. She knows he has four motor cars, a home in fashionable Park Avenue, another in a New York suburb, four more in Europe. She also knows he rarely visits them, leaving their luxuries to his U. S. wife and his two small children.

Probably she does not concern herself with figures. But Son Louis may have told her, jubilantly, that in 1927 he cleared $163,968, and in the first five months of 1928 he made $83,161. He may have told her, last week, that a syndicate was offering the public 40,000 shares of Louis Philippe, Inc., cumulative participating convertible Class A common stock. She would not have understood the financial terms, but she would have known that she did well when she led her little boy to a kitchen stove in Paris.

It was perhaps harder for Louis Philippe to make $100 in 1910 than $163,968 in 1927. Last year, U. S. beauty seekers paid between $400,000,000 and $500,000,000 to cosmetics makers, who had already devoted $40,000,000 to advertising. At times, the advertising pages of such magazines as the Cosmopolitan (Hearst) seem almost exclusively devoted to cosmetics. Every small town has its beauty specialist, its "parlors," where creams and lotions, pastes, lipsticks, rouges, powders are on sale. As an industry, cosmetics making has all the modern paraphernalia. It has its trade papers (Toilet Requisites, Toilet Goods Economist), its federal supervision (no health-destroying chemicals), its radio programs (Gimbel Bros. Station WGBS).

As long ago as 1924, the great Schulte interests took over Vivaudou, Inc., added such concoctions as "Melba," "Djer-Kiss," and "Mavis" to their inventories, recognized the beauty appetite as competitive with the tobacco appetite.

Alluringly foreign are the names of precious unguents and their makers. But deep hidden under the black-bakelite boudoir jars of Terri's "Exquisite Face Powder" one may find the name of Terence Ryan, its maker. And famed Madame Helena Rubinstein is also called Mrs. Edward Titus. Laden with scents and sounds of the Orient, her most esoteric triumphs reach Manhattan from no more distant point than her factory on Long Island.

Madame Rubinstein is among the most important, most fashionable of U. S. beauty specialists. In her bizarre, red and yellow shop in East 57th Street, Manhatten, she displays many a cosmetic product made of water lilies. To the skeptical she offers a tour of inspection at the Long Island factory. Here she would exhibit row on row of half-opened water lilies, kept fresh until the exact moment when their essence may be impounded into creams, powders, lipsticks. Less aesthetic visitors could feast their eyes on tubs of cucumbers, great bunches of parsley leaves. Madame Rubinstein is justly proud of her products, noted for their active qualities, making the skin tingle. At her shop, min-istrants to beauty smile when a newcomer tries an application. "Timid women," they 'remark, "are-terrified."

A yellowish-white product of whale oil known as spermaceti is at the base of most creams, most lipsticks. Vegetable dyes provide the color. The beet is a common source of red coloring, as is the European plant alkanet, and cochineal, crushed from the dried bodies of the female Coccus Cacti, a Mexican and Central American beetle with a fondness for cactus. Plants and insects yield carminic acid. Aniline will make lipstick indelible; benzoin makes it kissproof.

Each maker chooses some particular exotic ingredient to capture the imagination of the beauty-seeking public. Amor Skin is advertised as "a new scientific discovery to rejuvenate the skin." Originally, it included a substance extracted from the skin of very young iguana lizards. But as the demand grew, young iguana lizards became scarce. And it conveniently happened that the same substance was found in the skin-glands of the tortoise. Amor Skin may be purchased for $16.50 by women between the ages of 20 and 35. Older women who crave tortoise skin glands must pay $25.

Most makers claim a base of rice for their powders. But many a woman hides a red nose with much the same chalk dust that her grandmother used. Her grandmother went to the drugstore, bought chalk drops and crushed them herself. Now she could choose between a multiplicity of powders, scented, exotically labeled, but not far different from the - chalk-drops.

The U. S. is not much concerned with the issue of rice or chalk. It concentrates upon chemical, synthetic dyes. Lemon creams, smelling of tropical fruit groves but actually scented and colored with dangerous chemicals, are hateful to the Federal Trade Commission.