Color Stories: Behind the Scenes of America's Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry

An insider's view of all the brainstorming, bickering, and bitchery that go into those little sticks of color and pans of powder: Business journalist, former beauty editor, and noted scholar on the development of the U.S. beauty industry Mary Lisa Gavenas takes us behind the scenes during the nine months that culminate in the launch of a season's all-important "color stories." In often funny, sometimes poignant chapters, we discover how one shade becomes the "must have," how companies create desire at the counters, and exactly how easy -- and impossible -- it is to start a million-dollar makeup line.

Backstage at the runway shows, we're swept into the catty, chaotic work world of makeup mogul Bobbi Brown and supermodel Gisele Bndchen. At Este Lauder headquarters, we see the achingly chic Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer spin societal trends into a lipstick lineup. We watch magazines cheat to make makeup work for layouts, find out how Cindy Crawford got to be worth every penny of her $10 million contract, and make the pilgrimage to Dallas as 35,000 of the Mary Kay faithful assemble for the fabled annual Seminar. Along the way, we also learn about marketing, media, and the manipulation of aesthetics, about the codification of physical beauty, and how this industry revolutionized the role of women in business.