The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms which have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us. This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today's global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty, and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and its association with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world. Today globalization is changing the beauty industry again; its impact can be seen in a range of competing strategies. Global brands have swept into China, Russia, and India, but at the same time, these brands are having to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets are opened up worldwide. In the twenty first century, beauty is again being re-imagined anew. "There are plenty of lessons for entrepreneurs and industry executives"-- Womens Wear Daily "Geoffrey Jones intimates in the title of his detailed economic history of the beauty business, Beauty Imagined, that [beauty] is created by the collective will of a consumer society. Assessing beauty as a social construct, Jones takes the late 19th century as his starting point, when an increase in mass visual dissemination, particularly the spread of commercial photography, saw ideals of beauty shift from the personal and private to the communal."-- Financial Times "Nothing slips away in Jones's book. All the great cosmetic monsters rampage through the book."-- The Guardian "A must read for the beauty junkie."--Julia DiNardo, fashionpulsedaily.com "If you have a passion for beauty then you need to read this book. True stories about the people behind the most famous brands make the cosmetic industry come alive as you learn how it has become such a significant part of our global culture."--Leslie Blodgett, Executive Chairman of Bare Escentuals and founder of bareMinerals "Both men and women have dressed their hair, painted their faces, and sought ways to enhance their sexual allure in every time and place, yet the ways they have done so are infinitely various.... Given the degree to which beauty is interwoven with cultural concepts, it might seem impossible to talk of global beauty, but it is the achievement of this book to show how what was once culture bound has expanded into a multinational business."-- Business History Review "One of the more fascinating stories in modern business history.... The book is thoroughly researched with documentation based on five years of interviews with companies and selected executives from prominent brands. Primary sources from corporate as well as government archives and private collections are the background for a well-supported analysis of two centuries of the beauty industry.... Of special interest are the statistics and figures never published before, revealing the scale of the industry today and its dramatic and consistent growth over the decades.... Jones offers valuable new knowledge for the critical eye of a professional business historian. At the same time the book is a must-read for anyone working in the beauty or fashion business."--EH.net "A deft, comprehensive history that charts [the beauty industry's] path from the ancient craft of perfumery to the vast commercial cornerstone it now is... Fans of figures and appendices will find a neat summary of how the beauty business has developed, including its many mergers, acquisitions, and divestments. Those who simply love fragrance might be interested to know how Lauder transformed department store beauty halls, and her own fortunes, with Youth Dew, a fragrance whose name encapsulates the big promise in a seductively natural and simple way. The business behind it is anything but."-- The Oldie "Geoffrey Jones has written a formidable history of the Beauty Industry that reads like a novel. Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry ...is poised to become a classic of the genre. It should be read by anyone involved in the beauty business."-- Arab News "The book is to be admired and its author congratulated for the deft (and pioneering) fashion in which order is imposed upon such a recalcitrant subject. For anyone interested in the lineaments, scope and statistics of the beauty industries this is essential reading. It teaches us a great deal about the size and comparative structure of firms and conglomerates as they devour smaller ventures and then get gobbled up themselves."-- English Historical Review "Jones sets a new standard in skill