We sat at a café table on the mezzanine, that overlooked the main selling floor of Macy’s Herald Square, their flagship store in NYC. I was being interviewed for a position selling cosmetics for Prescriptives, a makeup and skincare line created by Estée Lauder, the grande dame of lipstick and lotions, perfume and potions. The doyenne of the almighty dollar. She made a mint teaching women how to look their best, smell their sweetest, and nurture skin that would defy aging and positively glow. And she originated the ever popular “gift with purchase.” Estée had it going on. She was a retail temptress.
She said the idea for the gift with purchase came to her because she was a generous person. That may have been true, but I also think it was because she was a brilliant marketer. That woman knew how to upsell, and she made sure that her salesforce, her beautiful “girls” knew how to build a sale, too.
I have almost no idea why I said yes to this interview or why I applied in the first place. Mostly, it was because I needed to pay my bills. I was confused about life, and where I was going, and while I was trying to figure it out, I still needed to eat and pay rent. It was the 1980s, and yes, I was one of the lucky ones. I had a rent-controlled apartment in a great neighborhood, but even still, the city was an expensive place to live. And the job was walking distance from my place in Chelsea.
My interviewer was a lovely, extremely attractive woman named Sandra. She was chic. Her makeup was flawless and tasteful. She was the area rep for the line, and would be my frontline boss if I was hired.
She “appreciated my ebullience,” thought I was “awfully pretty,” and “very well-spoken.” She wanted to hire me; except for one detail about my appearance that I’d have to change. At the time of the interview, I was sporting a short haircut and that was fine. It was the Annie Lennox platinum blonde DIY dye job that would have to go.
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t reflect the brand, our message,” she informed me. “Especially when your dark roots start coming in,” she whispered, leaning toward me as she patted my hand, as if to console me for my lack of sophistication. I was a boring brunette. I was trying to mix it up, add some spark, some excitement to my look.
I was also in lust with Annie Lennox. We had an amazing sex life…if only in my dreams.
I asked if I had options besides going back to my natural color. She said, “sure! Red is fine, or highlights, or a more natural looking blonde, that kind of thing.”
I thought to myself, “they’re already trying to change me. I’ve been down this road before. It never ends well.”
I agreed to her condition. Sandy needed to verify my references and do a background check and would get back to me as quickly as possible. She also informed me that should I become an employee of Macy’s, it would be mandatory for me to march in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Oh. Goody? I thought to myself, “as long as I can be a balloon handler, I’ll be okay with it. Maybe.” I really liked the orange coveralls they wore. After I was hired, I found out that to be a balloon handler you had weigh at least 170 pounds. No dice. At the time, I was enjoying my anorexic eating behaviors too much to gain enough to meet the weigh-in requirement. No way was I giving that up.
I found out the next day that they wanted me to start the following Monday. I headed to the Manic Panic store on the lower east side and chose a new color. Audacious Red!
My mother was thrilled when I told her I was going red. She was a natural redhead who craved nothing more than a ginger child or two. Sorry, Mom. This was my chance to make good. When mom and her husband saw my new color, they mocked me by changing the name of the color from Audacious Red to Atrocious Red. They thought they that was hoot. I was not amused. Mom’s husband was once a natural redhead, too. But gray had taken over and vanity fought back. He dyed on the sly, DIY. I knew where he hid his Lady Clairol, his rubber gloves, and his applicator bottle. He had a secret drawer in his bathroom that contained an even more secret recipe that was a blend of 3 different colors. I’ve got to give him credit. It looked natural.
Prescriptives was an upscale version of Clinique, with slick gray packaging and a noxious fragrance called Calyx. That grapefruit-scented disaster made me ill whenever I drew the short straw for the perfume demonstrator shift. You know. I had to be one those obnoxious salespeople who stand in the aisle assaulting customers with our spray bottles of foul-smelling esters. The worst. I would apologize profusely to passersby as I offered them a spritz. At least I was making people laugh.
Here’s a thing about me. Throughout my life, I’ve been a bit of a shapeshifter. My recovery friends would call it codependence. My exes would label me a chameleon, and not in a lovey-dovey pet name kind of way. What I’m trying to say is that when I sign on to something, I immerse myself completely. I was an actress who could play any role.
If selling cosmetics was the hot new job in my life, I was going to wear me some makeup. I was all in.
Before that job, I didn’t use much makeup. I resisted. I wasn’t interested in being a “real girl,” whatever that is. My only experience with the stuff was seeing my mother apply foundation, powder, lipstick, blush, and mascara. Then, she’d pencil her eyebrows in every day because she didn’t have hers anymore due to years of obsessive tweezing throughout her teens. She was a woman who thought nothing of applying nail polish while she was driving. While she was driving us around in her car. With me in the backseat praying we wouldn’t die.
Wait. I misspoke. My other experience with makeup had to do with another all-in occupation that I pursued with enthusiasm and deep commitment. I was a mime and a clown in high school. I could apply whiteface makeup that was so good, I could compete with the best clowns of Ringling Brothers any day of the week. On occasion, I’d get up extra early to apply a full face of zinc greasepaint before I left for school at 7am. Yes, I was a bit of a freak in high school. I thought that by wearing that makeup and refusing to speak to anyone because I was doing my best Marcel Marceau impersonation, I was making myself invisible. When in fact the opposite was closer to the truth. I wanted to be seen but couldn’t figure out a way to do it by just being me. I was incognito, and yet not.
As I started my new gig, I knew that if anyone came to the counter wanting to look like a clown, they could send me in to do the job right. No one else at that counter had my qualifications.
You ask me, “Nan, did they give you free makeup, so you’d look your best while you sold Estée’s wares?” No. They did not. But we did get a small discount and that was considered a perk. Whenever I bought something, if I spent enough, I’d get a free gift with purchase. I always got a free gift with purchase. Now, that’s winning.
The more I learned about makeovers, the more I sold, the more I earned, the more makeup I bought. The other girls at the counter were more experienced than I and they taught me so much. There was one neat trick we all did. Weekly French manicures. White tips that made our hands look clean all the time, when in truth, we did it to conceal the caked foundation that accumulated under our nails from doing free makeovers with nary a sink to wash our hands in between each one. We were, in a word, filthy.
I became the glamour girl my mother always dreamed of. I was so into my makeup job, that I didn’t dare leave my house, even to walk my dog early in the morning, when no one would see me, except for the drag queens making their way home from the bars. It was the only time I ever looked better than they did. But it was nuts. We’re not talking a little powder and lipgloss. We’re talking the works. Washing, exfoliating, moisturizer, eye cream. I was 26. I didn’t need eye cream. Eye shadow (3 colors, blended), eyebrow pencil, eyeliner, mascara, two blushes for extra contour, lip moisturizer as a base coat, lip liner, lipstick, and a squirt or two of Calyx. Yes. I hated Calyx, but I was one of Estée’s girls. I was a company girl. My dog, Sophie, could hold it in a little bit longer. She had a fierce bladder.
I didn’t work at Macy’s for terribly long. Just how long is a blur at this point. I know my time was short because back then, I didn’t stay in any job for very long. I was busy being a chameleon, changing colors as I moved through my life, trying different things.
I was in the store the morning of the debut and press event for Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume. Liz was running 30 minutes late and the store was filled with fans, pushing and shoving, with hundreds lined up out on the street, dying to get in. The media was there in force. The reps and executives were there, from every company that sold the promise of beauty to insecure women. The women who felt they needed to conceal their true faces and reinvent themselves every day.
I stood at attention at my counter dressed in my shimmery gray smock, Atrocious Red reapplied the night before in my bathroom sink. I had newly manicured French tips that were pristine underneath. No dirt on this girl. I was scrubbed and polished. I wore a perfectly applied face of makeup that vaguely resembled the real me. An elegant older woman approached the kiosk. I recognized her as she came closer. It was Mrs. Lauder. Estée. The mother of us all. She looked at me, took my chin in her hand, and said “My dear, you’re so lovely; you have flawless skin. Who do you work for?” I thought she was kidding at first, but then I realized she wasn’t. She didn’t make the connection. I looked into her eyes, and gently said, “Why, Mrs. Lauder, I work for you.” She acknowledged her faux pas, and giggled, ducking her head a little, and rolling her eyes at herself. She gazed up at the sign that declared her brand and smiled at me. As we stood there, the space got very quiet and Elizabeth Taylor began her descent down the grand staircase from the very same mezzanine where I had my interview. She was breathtaking. You could hear the oohs and aahs floating up from the mob of fans who were there to greet her and spend some dough.
On Thanksgiving eve of that year, I partied all night long in the bars. I never made it home to sleep and showed up at the warehouse uptown at 4am to claim my outfit from what seemed like hundreds of racks of costumes for the parade. I felt shaky, after a night of dancing and flirting, drinking and cigarettes, and maybe a line or three of that funny white powder that kept me going. The girls of the Prescriptives counter were assigned to the Lady Liberty float. We were given ugly silver pantsuits that had seen better days. As I pulled the costume on over my long johns, I couldn’t figure out if the bile rising in my throat had more to do with my night of over-indulgence or the dried sweat stains in the armpits of the pantsuit I’d just put on. The headpiece looked more like the foam ones you can buy in a novelty shop. I was embarrassed by this sad representation of the statue that meant so much to so many.
I slogged down the avenue, trudging along, bearing my papier mâché torch high in the air. No, we didn’t get to ride on the float, we were the escorts. We walked and waved to the crowds that lined the route. When the parade concluded, I turned in my costume, and, inspired by Lady Liberty, turned in my resignation at the close of Black Friday weekend, setting myself free from the sales floor and the makeovers, forever.
Forty years later, I found myself working for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation as a freelance graphic designer. The job fell in my lap and paid really well. ADDF is the non-profit research organization that Ronald and Leonard Lauder, Estée’s sons, founded in honor of their mother, who had the disease and died in 2004 at the age of 97. Or 95? The record isn’t clear. But she looked great. I’m sure of it.
Estée Lauder was one of the most successful businesswomen in history. By 1995, her company was valued at two billion dollars. Not bad for a self-starter raised by Hungarian Jewish immigrants in a working-class family from Queens, NY.
Afterword:
My original plan was to write about makeup and fashion and the politics of patriarchy and why women are expected to disguise themselves, to prettify, to hide their “flaws” and why the same standard of self-care isn’t expected of men. But the muse took me elsewhere and I decided to follow where she led. As I got to the part of the story about meeting Estée, I realized for the first time that she might have already been experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s, and that’s why she asked me who I worked for.
As I wrote of my Lauder family experience come full circle, it drew tears at how bittersweet life can be.
Brava, Estée. You did good.
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