Planet Money - Fashion Fair's makeover

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Fashion Fair was the first big national brand to make makeup for Black women, but it slowly faded into obscurity. Now that it's relaunched, can it compete in an industry it helped create? | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. One day in late 2019, longtime friends Desiree Rogers and Cheryl Mabry McKissick found themselves in a room waiting. They were waiting to see if they'd won an auction to buy a company. And so, as you can imagine, extremely nerve-wracking, you know, where you have to just put in your best bid, you know, sealed envelope kind of a thing. This wasn't the frenzied auction you've seen in the movies. There were no people raising their paddles, bidding against each other as the price goes up and up and up. Here, you don't know who you're bidding against and you have no clue what their motive might be. It was a blind bid. And so it's lawyers in a room

opening envelopes. Cheryl Mabry McKissick says the quiet made it feel intense. You're in basically a conference room with your attorneys and, you know, you put your bid in and the top two bids actually get an opportunity to bid against each other. And if you don't win those top two bids, you're kind of out of there pretty quickly. It had taken a lot for these two women to get here. They'd raised millions of dollars. It's all private information. And you put your bid in, and then they take it to whoever the other bidder is, and you go back and forth, back and forth. And then you get silence. And you go back and forth, back and forth. And then you get silence and you're like, OK, what happened? And every time a new envelope came back, it just ratcheted up

the anxiety level a little bit more. Maybe all this was going to be for nothing. All that work and what? Yeah, it was like Desiree said, you know, I don't think we have it. I mean, we haven't heard anything. And then, you know, about an hour later, they came in and said, you won the bid. For $1.85 million, what they'd won was a makeup company. But it wasn't just any makeup company. It was Fashion Fair. Fashion Fair. Fashion Fair. Nearly half a century ago, Fashion fair changed everything for Black women and cosmetics. It had been a one-of-a-kind brand, and Desiree and Cheryl were betting it could be again.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erika Barris. And I'm Karen Grigsby-Bage from Code Switch, NPR's podcast about race and identity. Today on the show, women of color spend billions on cosmetics. It's a very coveted demographic, and just about every brand is trying to get into these women's makeup bags and on their faces. But it wasn't always that way. This is the story of how Fashion Fair Cosmetics pioneered an industry and then blew it, and what they're trying to do now. and what they're trying to do now. Fashion Fair, this company that Cheryl and Desiree bought in late 2019,

was rooted in the 1950s. Back then, couture was not accessible to the masses the way it is now. Designers had trunk shows, but that was mainly to show their rich clients some of their best clothes. But then the Ebony Fashion Fair started, a traveling fashion show that went from city to city where regular people could see couture up close. You could see how a hand-stitched cape swirled. You could see a coat lined in badger, a sparkly dress with intricate beading. The show arrived in cities complete with a musical director and sets and models, pretty much all of whom were Black.

Audrey Smaltz was the announcer for the show. She was six glorious feet of unadulterated elegance. When I would come on stage, I would say, Audrey Smaltz is my name and fashion is my game. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Karen, you used to go to these shows? I did, Erica, and people dressed to the nines. It was a C and B scene kind of event. I remember going one year in my teens in what I thought was an especially chic black and white outfit. It was held in my high school auditorium, which held more than 500 people. And you came in from the back, the lobby, and just waded through the sea of black glamour to get to your seat. What Karen didn't know then was that while these models were strutting on stage in fancy clothes,

backstage, the scene was chaos. You'd have one model pressing a hot iron to her hair while another one was getting sewn into a dress. Someone else was tracking down the mate for, say, I don't know, a cream-colored heel. And then there was makeup. The models had to create their own. They would blend it themselves. They used whatever they could. You know, they'd go to the 5 and 10 and mix it up until they got the shade that they wanted for themselves. In the 1960s and early 70s, there really wasn't a national makeup brand that catered to women of color. There were some regional and smaller brands. And if you had money, you could go to the big cities for custom blends.

But who had the time or money for all that? Here, backstage, Audrey says it was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The women here were buying powder foundation made for a lighter complexion, then mixing in crushed up eye makeup like an eyeliner. It was like making spice blends at a kitchen counter and putting that on their faces. And I had some very dark girls, a little bit of this and a little bit of that until they got it right. And if these models couldn't find makeup, what did that mean for all the other like regular Black women out there? And remember, this was a very different time. The Civil Rights Act had passed less than a decade ago. So in theory, in theory, everything

was open to everyone. But as the show traveled from town to town, lots of places still had their own rules, like restaurants. Now, we couldn't eat everywhere, so then we would send the very fair-skinned girls to go get us some food. The locals would assume the very fair-skinned girls were white. In those towns, don't ask, don't tell got everybody dinner. The Ebony Fashion Fair was put on by the Johnson family. They published Ebony and Jet magazines, and they owned a bunch of different ventures. And they used the shows to raise money for charities like the NAACP, community centers, and to fund scholarships at Black colleges and universities. The Johnsons were wealthy, like having a real Picasso in your living room kind of wealthy.

Like having a real Picasso in your living room kind of wealthy. Like flying to Paris to spend a million dollars on hats, dresses and day suits wealthy. They had the money to do everything. You know, when you have the money, that's what it takes a lot of capital to get started. And they had the capital. The Johnsons had been believers that Black women were beautiful before Black is beautiful became a slogan. And they understood there was a need. Remember those models backstage mixing a little bit of this and a little bit of that?

They thought that need could be turned into a business. In 1973, they started a cosmetics company and called it Fashion Fair. And to start a whole new brand, they needed to make products and get people to buy them. Audrey Smaltz wasn't just a fashion show announcer. She also worked for the Johnsons on Fashion Fair. She says they started by hiring a chemist to make shades of foundation and lipstick that looked good on darker skin. We would try all the cosmetics on everybody who worked in the Chicago office. We had all shades of colors there, and we tried it on the darkest girl and the lightest girl. Oh, that's great. And everything in between. So you could kind of tweak as you

went along. Yeah, we would practice on our own employees. This is how Fashion Fair created and tested their makeup lines, like the chocolate raspberry lipstick or the bronze blaze foundation. But when the Johnsons tried to sell their new makeup line to established makeup companies like Revlon, no one wanted it. Maybe the big companies passed because there were already smaller brands, or maybe they weren't sure that you could make money selling makeup to Black women. The Johnsons thought those companies were wrong. And so they took a risk and went at it on their own, which meant next they needed packaging.

They settled on pink. Eunice came up with pink because Estee at that time was blue. Everything Estee did was blue. So Eunice said, well, I'll do pink. That's how we got pink. And I remember those compacts. I grew up with them. They were like this little pale marbleized pink. When I was a little girl, all the ladies I knew carried them around. And it was a status symbol. Pulling out that compact meant you cared about people caring about how you as a Black woman looked. No more making do with a

shade close to what you needed. Now, once they had the little pink compacts and lipsticks, they had to figure out how to sell it. In the 1970s, that meant setting up shop in department stores. The Johnsons had to personally visit stores, like traveling salespeople, to ask for space on the cosmetics floor. The first few companies they asked were the big boys, Marshall Field and Company in Chicago, A&S in Brooklyn, and Bloomingdale's in Manhattan. I knew who was the head man over there for cosmetics, Lester Grabetz. And so I called Mr. Grabetz and I said, I'm working for Ebony magazine and we have a cosmetic line. And can we

come see you tomorrow? Because Mr. Johnson was going to be in town the next day. He said, oh, of course, Audrey, we made that appointment. And they wanted the cosmetics immediately. These stores were in. All they had to do was give them some space on the floor. Meanwhile, those traveling fashion shows, they were still going, visiting dozens of cities every year with thousands of people attending. And now those shows were a kind of showcase for the new makeup brand. What I would do, we would have a little section and they would come on stage and I would say, this girl is in this shade of color and this one is in that. And I would tell them about the various shades that three or four of the models had on.

And they would do a little skit on the stage. Audrey would stand next to the model and point out the shade each woman was wearing. The chocolate raspberry lipstick or the Honey Glow Foundation. It was like a live commercial with in-person influencers. It was like a live commercial with in-person influencers. And then when people came to the show, naturally they wanted to go to that store or a store nearby to get the Fashion Fair cosmetics so they could look as pretty as the models did. The list of stores carrying Fashion Fair cosmetics kept growing. A few hundred more here, a few hundred more there.

They made more products like nail polish. And throughout the 70s and 80s, the brand's popularity just kept growing. Eventually, Fashion Fair Cosmetics was in more than 1,500 department stores. Those little pink compacts, they were a staple. Some of the lipstick shades, like that chocolate raspberry, became iconic. And Black women knew that if they walked into a department store, there was a Black woman behind a counter that was filled with products made just for them. The women who worked at Fashion Fair reminded me of my aunts, of my friends, of my family. That's Sam Fine, Southside Chicago native, makeup artist to the stars. I'll be super cool about name dropping, but like all the stars, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Michelle Obama, Beyonce. Also, like both of us, Sam has strong fashion fair memories.

I remember taking my prom date to a fashion fair counter to get her makeup done for prom. It was an experience. It was a cultural experience. It was a place where you felt welcomed. When it debuted, Fashion Fair had filled a need, but it also showed other brands this market they'd been ignoring. Fashion Fair had what's called a first mover advantage. Essentially, they pioneered a field and showed it can be done. So other companies followed. Many brands expanded to include deeper colors. But Fashion Fair had such a bedrock base that it acted like, hey, if it ain't broke, why fix it? Through the 70s and 80s and 90s, the world had changed, but Fashion Fair had not.

They did not embrace youth. They did not embrace youth. They did not embrace youth. Fashion fair's descent wasn't this huge disastrous crash. Its fall was much more mundane. It was more like a slow slide into obscurity. Cosmetics, like fashion, is all about seasons, about what's new and what's fresh, what colors are in. And fashion fair just didn't keep up.

They stayed complacent. They didn't change. By the mid-90s, fashion fair felt like they were stuck in the late 70s. Those pink compacts that had been so of the moment now look dated next to all the other sleek matte black compacts that were on the market. sleek matte black compacts that were on the market. Fashion fair could have done, I think, some, pun intended, cosmetic things to freshen itself up, but it didn't for a really long time. The pink compacts were around for a long time until finally they became bronze. And that was still too late. By the time the bronze had come along, that was still,

And that was still too late. By the time the bronze had come along, that was still, it was too late. It was them looking to compete and not lead the way. And that's always going to be a problem if you aren't, if you're a brand that doesn't embrace change. Only changing the packaging was like old wine in a new bottle and not in a good way. And there was other change afoot. Or a face. When fashion fairs started out in department stores, customers would walk up and go to a lady behind the counter. She was like part makeup guide and part gatekeeper. You had to ask to try something on. Maybe you would then buy all their products from just one brand.

But the whole process could be intimidating. And then Sephora happened. Sephora, for the uninitiated, is this store where you walk in, try whatever you want, wherever you want, and then just mix and match. Eyeliner from one brand and a brow pencil from another. And shoppers' choices were increasingly guided by the new gatekeeper. I'm using a drugstore mascara because mascaras have such a short shelf life. They were on social media. Influencers and celebrities and randos, that's who endorsed and sold cosmetics. Using a foundation brush really helps to soften off.

This new grab-baggy model was game-changing. It's like the shift that happened from butcher and bakery counters to just grab it supermarkets. Sephora became a hit, and they carried lots of brands, including some fancy ones that had been in department stores, but not fashion fair. Those business oversights, they were costly for the company. They really started to take their consumer for granted, and there really was no newness.

Sam Fine, the makeup artist to the stars, you know, Michelle, Naomi, Tyra, Beyonce, came on to fix the problems and revamped the brand. He started to work for Fashion Fair in 2011. He quickly discovered they had more problems than they had lipstick colors. There were things makeup companies did to attract buzz and sell cosmetics when a seasonal line came out, like sending a celebrity makeup artist to stores around the country to show people how to use the product, or having a big launch party full of photographable celebrities. That wasn't happening for Fashion Fair. If something new came out, it was just there, sitting on the department store counter, waiting for Loyalist to maybe discover it. It was becoming clear to me that another collection couldn't simply survive on the counter and being discovered in that way. You have to make noise. If we're not doing a tour

and a launch, what are we doing? After only a couple of years, Sam Fine left the company. And in the years that followed, all those problems, where the products were sold, how they were advertised, and even what they were, came to a head. You were watching Fashion Fair as an outsider. Tell me what you were seeing. Death.

fashion fair as an outsider. Tell me what you were seeing. Death. In 2019, with very little attention paid to it, fashion fair cosmetics filed for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. After the break, we see if fashion fair can be resurrected. So, in 2019, Fashion Fair had gone into bankruptcy. That meant the iconic makeup brand that decades earlier had proved that a cosmetics company for Black women can thrive was no more. When things go into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, they can be put up for auction.

That actually happens all the time. And when it went up, Desiree Rogers was shopping. She was a longtime Chicago businesswoman. She had served as the social secretary in the early years of the Obama White House. And for a while, she'd been the CEO of Johnson Publishing, the old owners of Fashion Fair. Desiree had been looking to get into something new, and she thought, maybe cosmetics. She called her friend Cheryl Mabry McKissick. Desiree came to me and said, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, I don't know a lot about it. I never bought anything out of bankruptcy. Cheryl had worked at big and small tech companies, and she had also worked at Johnson. And it was a risk, you know, because we didn't buy a bunch of product and a distribution or any of that.

There was nothing of that left when we bought it out of bankruptcy. So we bought a brand. Desiree knew getting a brand going, even one with deep roots, maybe even especially one with deep roots, was not going to be easy. Everything is hard. I mean, everything from start to finish is difficult. The history gives us maybe a little kind of added kick in our high heels, but certainly not something that we're just going to say, you know, let's just do the same thing over again. Because there's a lot of competition now.

In 2017, Rihanna started Fenty Beauty. This is like a birthday party. This is like an album released. I'm so excited. This is a an album released. I'm so excited. This is a dream come true. Fenty launched with dozens of foundation shades from bisque to practically black. All women should be able to have their own shade of foundation. It's that simple.

Rihanna perfected the thing that fashion fair did first and then some. Fenty was immediately incredibly popular, and notably, the darkest shades sold out first. And now, just about every single cosmetics brand sells many shades of brown foundation. I don't think our expectation is that it's going to be exactly the same as it was, you know, when fashion fairs first came out. There wasn't a lot of competition. There's lots of competition now. Fendi has a lot going for it. It has the backing of a big multinational company. It has a huge celebrity. When Cheryl and Desiree first bought Fashion Fair out of bankruptcy,

they didn't have any of those things. What they did have was history and the name Fashion Fair. So in 2019, they had to figure out who their customer was. We had several focus groups, users, previous users, non-users, never heard of it ever in my life. And so we had all of this data that we went through to say, okay, we know we have all these folks that really, really love the brand, and they're probably in this kind of age group. There are some brands that I only purchase those brands because I know they have colors for my skin tone. We've been supporting white brands all of our lives, and, like, why not, like,

have something that's specifically for us that we can support ourselves? That's from a recent HBO documentary, The Beauty of Blackness, about fashion fair. Fashion fair loyalists were saying one thing. They wanted that exact thing back. Don't tamper with it. Don't mess with it. This is what I want. This is what I wore for so many years. I don't want anything different. And then you had, of course, a newer group that said, look, I'm happy to look at it. I'm happy to give it a chance, but it needs these characteristics because this is what I'm looking for in my makeup. Cheryl and Desiree made a choice to bank on Black women remembering the brand in

its heyday in the 70s and 80s. They were relying on something called the economics of nostalgia, essentially the idea that things that were beloved can be profitable. We see it all the time, right? Reboots and remakes of movies and re-releases of old school sneakers, new takes on an old car. Cheryl says for the fashion fair loyalists, not bringing back beloved shades was non-negotiable. If we brought back lipsticks and didn't bring back chocolate raspberry, I probably wouldn't be here live telling you about it. You know, I mean, we knew that, okay? But some of the ingredients that they used in the original lipstick

are now restricted or prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration. So Desiree and Cheryl worked with a dermatologist to make new formulas for the OG products. They had to be, quote, clean. Once they had the products, like a new formula for that chocolate raspberry lipstick, or even new products like the brown sugar babe powder, they had to figure out how to package it. They decided against the iconic little pink compact. They relaunched with a new compact. It's white with a slim gold accent and a modern logo etched into the top. Next up, where to sell. In the summer of 2020, they were pitching the new fashion fair to stores.

This was right after George Floyd was murdered, and companies were making all sorts of pledges to address institutional racism. Like Sephora said it would devote 15% of its shelf space to Black-owned companies. That worked out for Desiree and Cheryl. Ironically, Sephora, the very same company that had been responsible for the demise of cosmetics counterculture, would be carrying fashion fair. And now that it's in stores again, this is what Desiree and Cheryl are hearing. One woman said, oh my God, chocolate raspberry is back. It was

the color, you know, I wore to my prom. It was the color I kissed my dad on his deathbed and left the color on his face. People have all kinds of stories. This is the makeup that my mom, you know, bought for me. Now we should say Fashion Fair is privately owned, and so it's hard to see if what they're doing is succeeding. Basically, the question is, will Fashion Fair survive the battlefield of new products? Especially because even with all those warm memories, people can pick and choose any of the hundreds of brands out there. Big thanks to Karen Grigsby-Bates for reporting the story with me. Karen is usually over at Code Switch, a podcast about race and identity.

Check out the podcast. One of my favorite episodes is Death of a Bloodsport. And of course, there's the one about the Karens. And look for Planet Money on social media. Our TikTok is pretty amazing. We are at Planet Money. This episode was produced by Emma Peasley and edited by Jess Jang. It was mastered by Isaac Rodriguez.

Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thanks to Sarah Jindal and the makers of HBO's The Beauty of Blackness. I'm Erica Barris. And I'm Karen Grigsby-Bates. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. I remember there was one particular dress. It was a suit with a silver fox.

It had gray shoes. Just elegant. And I would say, what to wear on Sunday when you don't get home to Monday. Everybody can relate to that. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.