Transcription

• Speaker #0

  An innate understanding of skin. Even before her name was on a door, Ella Baché had already made a name for herself in the shadows, thanks to her skills as a formulator. It was in her home, secretly in her laboratory on Rue Godot de Mourois, that she created her first creams, much like the magistral preparations made by pharmacists. She sent samples to major perfume and beauty houses. One day, a customer asked her to recreate formulas without any instruction, as the labels on the bottles containing the perfume essences and the colorings for making the foundations had mysteriously vanished. Finding the same scents and fragrances was a challenge, but Ella Baché managed to do so brilliantly. From that moment on, I became a chemist consultant. At that time, the cosmetics industry was still in its infancy. The products were harsh, aggressive or even dangerous. Makeup and masks were applied, and Skin concealed, without any care ever being taken. Ella, on the other hand, wanted to make formulas differently. Skin became her primary focus for exploration. Through careful observation, she developed a new career path, beauty-focused pharmacy. She steps behind the scenes of Haute Couture to prepare models' skin before the fashion shows. and she quickly made a place for herself in a world in search of perfection. As a pioneer in makeup and skincare, she developed the first moisturizing foundations, as well as eye and lip colors, that fashion designers fought over. Every year, one or two of my new shades became the season's must-have colors, she said. I remember a cyclamen red in particular, which became iconic with a renowned fashion designer in the 1930s. But after color, It was her vision of skincare that could be seen in her creations. I was already seeing how I could prevent makeup from harming skin. I incorporated an emollient cream base into all my eyeshadows to prevent them from drying out the eyelids, cheeks or lips. A scientific requirement and a deep commitment to skin respect. Her cleansing milk anecdote perfectly illustrates how brilliant she was at adapting. Just before she set up on Rue de la Paix, A major brand in Faubourg Saint-Honoré asked her to develop a complex formula under extreme time pressure. Working relentlessly, she unknowingly creates a product destined to become iconic. That was how I developed my cleansing milk, a really nourishing emulsion that could be used as a product on its own to nourish and protect the skin. Along the same lines of observation, when she arrived in the capital, she developed the first metal pot. of hot wax in Europe for hair removal. It was a bold innovation at the time, as hair removal was still taboo. Only women with so-called loose morals did so, but skirts were getting shorter and legs were being shown. As a pioneer, Ella Baché recognized this shift in societal norms and developed a revolutionary wax that she sold directly to pharmacies. We were the only ones, the Marnettes sisters and I, to have introduced it in France, she remembered. It was an original method for removing hair, and for a long time she was one of the only ones to offer it, giving women new freedom with a once marginal gesture.