“This shade of lipstick I’m wearing,” Constance went on, “would look absolutely magnificent on you. It’s true that because of your naturally luscious complexion, you barely need makeup at all.”
The woman blushed again.
“But if I were to recommend a shade, it would be this one.” She opened her bag and a display case. “This luscious shade of peach is called ‘Sunday Picnic.’ And then, just maybe a touch of ‘Turquoise Sky’ on the eyes to balance out the glow.”
The woman tilted her head and leaned forward as though to peer inside Constance’s bag.
“Would you like to hear more about our products?” Constance asked.
“I don’t really have time this morning. I’m just finishing setting the table and I need to get dinner going because my husband is bringing some of his colleagues over tonight. But thank you.” She tapped the door again.
This time, Constance moved quickly and squeezed her entire body in the door. “All the more reason,” she said. “If he’s bringing his colleagues home tonight, you may want a couple of tricks up your sleeve. He’ll be so proud to show you off.”
The matron giggled. “Perhaps he wouldn’t mind if I make a little extra effort on his behalf.”
“Of course he wouldn’t mind. He’ll appreciate it! And I’m sure he’ll thank you in spades.” She grinned in a suggestive way. For a split second, Constance worried that the smile had been too suggestive, but the matron seemed convinced. “He’ll think you look like you did on your honeymoon!”
“Is that a fact?” The woman’s eyes twinkled at the thought.
“You don’t mind if I come in for a few minutes? It’s easier to show you these products indoors without all this glorious sunshine.”
The woman looked right, then left, as though ensuring there were no lurking spies; then, giving in to Constance’s—and her own—temptation, she giddily let Constance in.
Inside, Constance availed herself of the ample space on the matron’s highly polished dining room table, spreading out her wares like an Istanbul trader. She fanned out each color in a rainbow like an equatorial bug trying to attract a mate. Each shade of lipstick, eye shadow, and blush was different: blushes from rose to magenta, eye shadows from powder blue to sky blue to lavender to emerald green, and lipsticks in every shade of pink and red from coral to tomato.
So was born the concept of the Gardiner Girls, a special kind of workforce—part salesgirl, part sister, part den mother, part movie star—all in the comfort of a woman’s own home. Constance Gardiner was the perfect salesgirl for her own product, not only because she was the ultimate proponent of her brand—lithe, well-appointed, immaculately put together—but because she was the ultimate ambassador. The challenge for Constance, with her blond patrician looks and bearing, was how to appeal to women from every echelon—not only the matrons with the mansions and mahogany dining room tables, but the women making do in small sculleries in tiny homes and apartments. For these were the women who most needed the promises the Gardiner Girls held in store. These were the women who, Constance was certain, harbored their own glorious dreams, women who would buy her products in droves.
8
THE COTTON
Harlem, 1927
“You’re gorgeous and high yeller. Girl, you gotta see my friend at the Cotton!”
CeeCee had heard this endorsement time and time again, ever since she had blossomed into a beautiful young woman from a gangly teen. And while she had no desire to be a dancer or a singer, spangles and feathers holding little allure, she decided to listen to her successful and sophisticated cousin and give it a try. She would high kick the hell out of the chorus line if it meant getting her “high-yellow ass” up to New York’s famed Cotton Club. “High yellow” was the term for light-skinned, mixed-race blacks. High yellow supposedly meant she was considered the elite of the African American community, but in reality it meant living in a kind of limbo, excluded by blacks for being too light yet considered by the whites to still be too black. Nevertheless, CeeCee Jones knew she didn’t have much of a choice. The standard options were clear. It was either a life as a “domestic,” living with a man, a man who might have a steady job as a train porter, if they were lucky. With this man, she would raise a large family. Her other option was perhaps the stage and dancing at the Cotton Club. Lord knew her mind worked differently and New York City would at least provide a different form of stimulation than bucolic Virginia. She consumed the discarded newspapers as if she were eating an ice-cream cone, having picked up the habit of reading the local papers at the Hewitts’. She told herself her time and higher education would come—this was her consolation to herself. She would take her cousin up on his offer and try out at the Cotton Club.
It was not lost on her that the first song she heard backstage was called “Creole Love Call,” performed by Adelaide Hall and Duke Ellington’s orchestra. Nor did she complain when she was given a costume for the Brazilian number that featured a ruffled skirt hemmed to her underwear in the front, floor length in the back, with a hat that was made to look as though she were balancing a bowl of fruit on her head. The fabric banana seemed to have come loose. She would have to sew it on. CeeCee’s late mother had been the daughter of a slave, a sharecropper who had a baby with a white man she never knew. The irony was not lost on her.
“What you doin’ sitting there, girl?” Gladys Potter, another ingenue, saw CeeCee sewing quietly in the corner between sets. “We’re on in ten.” Gladys slipped on her own fruit hat.
“Sewing bananas,” said CeeCee.
“Girl, this joint is bananas!” Gladys took her place in the line of the other girls as they prepared to rhumba onstage for their number, “Riot in Rio.”
CeeCee’s journey to the Cotton Club had been facilitated by her older cousin Rudy, who now lived in New York City. Rudy was a talented jazz trumpeter in Duke Ellington’s orchestra. Ellington was a pioneer in “jungle music” for the white audiences slumming it in Harlem, seeking exotic flavor and high style. The Cotton Club, which broke all the Prohibition rules, was overrun by mobsters and socialites, giving it an air of urbane sophistication and subtle rebellion. CeeCee’s cousin Rudy was at the center of it all. He was now playing for the dapper Ellington, who had seen him play at another venue and offered him a five-dollar-a-week raise, snagging him away from his former band position.
“I’d rather play ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ than hits from Shuffle Along.” He shrugged and grimaced at some of the overt canards of the lyrics and blackface projected onstage, but musicians could give little input on the material they were forced to play. And he knew he was lucky to have a steady-paying job in a popular orchestra.
“Cee, you’re gorgeous,” he had said. He had taken her aside at a family funeral in Virginia in his aunt’s shanty. He looked her over, amazed that this once gangly teen was now an incredibly beautiful woman. “You gotta see my friend at the Cotton Club.”
“I have no desire to be a dancer. Or a singer,” she said.
“Girl, it’s better than being a housemaid at the Hewitts’. You’re way too pretty to be polishing silver.”
“I’m running the house and they’re paying for secretarial classes for me. To study.”
“Yeah, but you’re still in Virginia and wait till you get to”—he blew a pretend trumpet with his elegant tapered hands—“New York!” He laughed, flashing a row of brilliant white, oversize teeth. “Harlem is happening and you don’t get called uppity dressing this way. Only here.” He pulled at his starched French cuffs and gold cuff links. “I can’t wait to get back north.”
And though CeeCee was content, she was also smart enough to know when opportunity knocked. Within days, she had given notice to the Hewitts, a lovely and progressive family who were sad to see her go but supportive of her move. They drove her to the train station, where she had to sit in the colored car, and gave her forty dollars as a bonus for working the four years. She hugged each of the Hewitt girls and promised to write as
she boarded the train. Then she sat, gazing out the window, clutching her tattered suitcase, watching the South chug by. She held firm to her belongings and the address of the boardinghouse that Rudy had given her. She was on her way.
* * *
“So your cousin is really as pretty as you said, Jonesy.” Herman Stark, the portly stage manager of the Cotton Club, surveyed CeeCee like a ripe apple and then flashed a smile at his talent manager, Lou Savarese. Lou had the best nose in the business for new talent. He could smell star quality. They both gave each other knowing glances as they saw her beautiful features and lithe, toned figure.
“They usually look like sacks of potatoes when they show up, but not this one.” Lou raised a bushy eyebrow.
“I told you.” Rudy nodded proudly.
“She ain’t high yellow,” said Lou. “More like high white.” Only her light brown complexion suggested a biracial history. The Cotton Club was noted for its strict rules; the showgirls all had to be “tall, tan, and terrific”—light-skinned, over five foot six, and under twenty-one years of age.
“Heck, she even has long straight hair. Never seen that before.” Lou reached out and grabbed a handful of hair as if she were an inanimate object and yanked it to see if it was real.
“It’s a secret formula,” CeeCee said. She pulled away in a ladylike fashion and raised herself erect.
“Yeah, who was your daddy?” Lou laughed. “That’s the secret formula!” He guffawed.
“Can you dance?” Herman asked.
“She can do everything. She’s like me. She sings, she dances, and she polishes silver. Heck, she may even play the trombone. The Jones family is very musical,” Rudy said, beaming.
“So you’re saying she knows how to blow…?” Lou laughed.
“Enough, Lou, this one seems to be more ladylike and right off the farm. No need to corrupt her on day one.” Herman shook his head. “You’re sure you want to be in this gin joint, girl? You seem a bit finer than the usual stock-in-trade.”
“Oh, yes.” CeeCee gave her brightest, high-wattage smile. “I’ve always dreamed of dancing at the Cotton Club.” She was glad Rudy had prepped her on what to say.
“Sure. Okay. Well, you’re certainly good-looking enough and, being that you’re Rudy’s cousin, we’ll try you out.”
“You’ll still need to show the choreographer your routine in five.”
“With her looks I’ll take her if she has two left feet.” Stark exhaled.
“Gotcha.” Lou nodded his head in agreement.
“You get thirteen dollars a week and free meals and shoes. You’ll take them in the dressing room with the other girls. You have to do your own makeup and hair and you have to be on time. No ifs, ands, or buts. We don’t tolerate lateness. If you’re the Queen of Sheba and you’re late—you’re o-u-t!”
“Of course, I understand. Thank you. That sounds perfect,” CeeCee said.
“Now you know the Cotton Club plays to an all-white audience. No mixing with the crowds unless a stage-door Johnny wants to see one of the ladies. But that’s up to you, sister.”
“She’ll be doing no such thing. I’ll break legs,” Rudy said.
“Yeah, wait until the wolves see this one.” Herman flashed his diamond pinky ring in her direction. “Honey, if your cousin weren’t attached to you like glue, you’d be rolling in it. Like the other girls.”
CeeCee smiled. “I’m not like the other girls.”
“That’s what they all say,” Lou said. “Until week two and a ten-dollar bill. Now go to wardrobe and get fitted. This week’s theme is ‘That Night in Rio.’”
“Everyone wants Latin now, and she can easily pass.” Herman said this without any irony, as though he actually meant it as a compliment. He yawned and flicked the ashes of his cigar.
Week two finally came and went. So did the constant passes and pinches of the musicians who sweet-talked her, the management who intimidated her, and one drummer who pushed her up against the dressing room door. She managed to escape several attempts and was soon enough considered uppity by the other girls who had invited her on double dates with the hordes of well-brought-up white men who showed up backstage for a date. CeeCee declined all offers and went home to read. Soon she was given the name Queen CeeCee, but she knew it was derisive.
“Oh, here she comes, with her books and her nose in the air … Queen CeeCee,” they said. She tried her best in the chorus line but knew she had two left feet. Two weeks came and went, and she was reading the New York Times “Help Wanted” section. She was not cut out for this line of work. She knew she needed a different type of job. And quick.
9
STAFFING UP
New York City, 1927
Despite the fact that she was a veritable mutt—part English, part French, part Canadian—Constance easily conveyed an image that she was “to the manor born.” She did not fight the assumptions that followed her into a room. Her bobbed blond hair, supple body, and classic oval face made her a perfect piece of casting for the Mayflower girl in New York. With looks like this and a good name, a woman was afforded certain luxuries, including an excellent array of options for mates, the respected and glamorous friends who came with entrée into this world, and all the opportunities that followed—party invitations, club invitations, summer spots, winter ski holidays, and the various pastimes of the rich that cemented these bonds: horses, tennis, beach clubs, skiing, dinner parties, and, in later years, cards. Constance’s circuit from the East Side of Manhattan to the best parts of the Hamptons, Southampton, of course, to favored spots in Palm Beach and the various ski destinations ensured that she had a built-in community for life. She understood that this community and rotation would form the foundation and contours of her social life. Yet she never expected this community to be the back on which her business was built.
Without ever selling directly to her friends, Constance used her social network to help build her business. They were her first consumers and her first cheerleaders. They were the ambassadors of her brand in drawing rooms and the press, as some even owned the magazines and news outlets. Constance knew that the richer they were, the more they wanted everything for free. And she was smart enough to gift the heiress she met at the Breakers or a Park Avenue dinner party a few moisturizers and the press agents covering the social events she crashed—and was eventually invited to—lipstick samples for their wives and girlfriends. It became clear to Constance that these women, this echelon, would not be her core business. The women who wanted, who needed, who aspired, to use Constance’s cosmetics tended to be women without privilege, women who could not afford the houses, the horses, the homes, the holidays. The women who wanted—and, Constance felt, in some altruistic sense most needed—her cosmetics were those who did not have access to the daydreams of luxury. Her products provided not only an arena for these daydreams, but a means by which these women might achieve them. While the prestige came from her social network … the sales came from the average, everyday women who lived a humdrum life and wanted or needed a small yet important affordable pick-me-up.
The old boys’ club was, of course, a function of Constance’s world. What she did not realize, nor could have predicted, was that she would form a new club, but not one for the upper-crust girls; they were settled into their memberships, ladies’ clubs, and the seasonal perks that came with that lifestyle. Instead, Constance inadvertently formed a club to which she might not have deigned to belong. The customers of the Constance Gardiner Beauty Collection, now legally Gardiner Cosmetics, had far less than Constance’s friends and those she aspired to be friends with. Still, Constance instinctively knew that these basic women would become her core customers and community. These plain and good women would form the financial base she needed to succeed. Slowly and quietly, she set out to reach these women. To do it without losing her original club would be the most perilous and important challenge for her business. She knew she needed staff who could relate to them. She hired Molly Simpson, a young blo
nd girl fresh off the farm from Minnesota, to shadow her and become the first official Gardiner Girl. Molly had pretty, non-intimidating looks, and to Constance’s delight she was down-to-earth and perky. Constance struck up a conversation with her one evening when she was a cigarette girl at a nightclub and found her personable and vivacious. At the end of the evening, she excused herself for a moment from her society friends and offered her a job on the spot. Molly was perfect; she was pretty without being threatening, and naturally chatty without being overly loquacious. Constance knew that someone like Molly could talk herself into more homes than she could, since she was one of these women. Her short bobbed blond pageboy haircut and cute upturned nose gave her a friendly, non-menacing look. She could have talked and walked her way into and out of the safe at Tiffany’s without attracting notice. She was perfect for the job.
Constance’s first office was a modest affair. She had steady sales, steady enough that James was able to leave his job as a bookkeeper and work for her full-time. Now, she needed a real office. She was a firm believer in the idea that a company should never grow bigger than its bottom-line expenses and she chose an office accordingly. She rented a room on the fifteenth floor of a respectable building on Fifth Avenue, as she knew the address would convey prestige. A building with a doorman and fine solid marble tiles on the entry floor, handsome bronze elevator doors, and a respectable location. Though the building was only a few blocks from Central Park on Fifty-seventh and Fifth, she chose an office without a view, or rather a view of the interior courtyard where the building’s trash was kept. In actuality it was little more than a utility closet with an attached stockroom. It boasted a wooden desk, a chair, and a black typewriter. But she was proud when she put her sign up and she and James painted the inside walls mauve.
There was no need for a view to impress clients. She did not have clients. She had customers. At least, she did not have clients yet. What she needed was a clean, quiet space where she could make phone calls to the various stores that stocked her product, or soon would, and a room in which to test and stock the products when they came back from the lab. Molly was hardly ever there, as she was out most of the time selling products door-to-door and training future Gardiner Girls in the field. All Constance needed was a bookkeeper and assistant to tally the orders from the stores and to help with the endless trips to the post office for shipping and fetching deliveries. Her first purchase was an official-looking metal file cabinet to store the purchase orders from the myriad small pharmacies she and James would canvas each day. He was in charge of selling to the local pharmacies and eventually to the department stores; Molly was in charge of door-to-door sales; and Constance focused on new product development. Gradually, as the business began to grow, she saw the need for an excellent assistant.
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