Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl
New York City and its fashionable department store Saks Fifth Avenue is the setting for Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl. A chance encounter at a local beauty parlor turns into a complete makeover for Estée Lauder, Gloria Downing, and the cosmetic industry of the 1930s and 1940s. Rosen’s novel is written from the fictional Gloria’s perspective as she is interviewed for an unauthorized biography of lifelong friend Estée Lauder. Rosen’s unique hook in the prologue is a question of whether Gloria will tell the truth or lie. Because Gloria knows everything.
Readers will be familiar with the major names in the early cosmetic industry: Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, and Revlon. Estée’s goal is to become a household name. She mixes skin care products in her tiny kitchen and Gloria, due to a family scandal, is reinventing herself and looking for a job. Estée’s natural beauty and charisma, paired with Gloria’s fashion sense, make for a dynamite team, and over the decades an explosive relationship develops.
Rosen’s well-researched anecdotes highlight how the unlikely friends complement each other’s weaknesses with support and encouragement. Rosen accurately depicts Estée’s brash, tenacious personality, which adds humor to unlikely, sometimes awkward situations on the beaches of Florida or the executive offices in NYC. The choices and expectations of women during the Depression are perfectly blended with each young woman’s dreams, giving readers insight into how they each become independent and self-sufficient. Gloria goes out of her way to avoid men, and Estée runs toward them, providing readers with situations for personal analysis and discussion.
Estée Lauder’s pioneering spirit and ingenuity have certainly had a lasting impact on the cosmetic industry. In Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl Renée Rosen’s themes of friendship, reinvention and family relationships are explored like the layers of a fine perfume.
