Cocteau called her “the woman who invented beauty”; everyone else called her ‘Madame’. Born the eldest of eight sisters in a poor quarter of Krakow in 1872,would go on to become one of the formative figures of the beauty world as we know it today.
Science played a key part in her success, but it was her vibrant creativity that distinguished her face creams and rouges from those of her rivals. While her husband, Edward Titus, publishedat Black Manikin Press, she lunched with Gabrielle Chanel, sat for sketches by Picasso, and discussed art with Jacob Epstein, living a life as rich as her miraculous concoctions.
Success followed success and in 1902 she opened her own salon in Melbourne. The same year saw Australian women become the first in the world to earn the right to vote. “Work helps to keep a woman young,” Rubinstein famously declared. “It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.” At a time when a woman’s position in the workplace was still fraught with issues, she defied expectations and forged her own path.
For Rubinstein, individualism was the key ingredient to beauty. “I have always had a weakness for the unusual,” she confessed. As a self-made business woman herself, she wished to grant women the power to celebrate their looks as they might celebrate great art: “For me,” she declared “it is just as important to help a human being become beautiful as it is to sculpt a great statue or paint a fine portrait.