Georgette Klinger, who helped introduce European-style skin care to American women, building a national beauty empire, has died. She was 88.
Klinger died Friday at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City, said Eileen Paley, senior vice president of marketing for Klinger's company. She had been in failing health and was recently hospitalized, but her family declined to state the cause of death.
Klinger, who emphasized a clean and natural complexion as an alternative to the heavily made-up look that was a signature of Hollywood beauty, built her business starting with one salon on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. She eventually had eight locations across the country, including salons in Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa.
Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Klinger became interested in skin care after struggling with acne as a teenager. She visited a number of dermatologists and learned the fundamentals of her future business by listening to them. What she heard was that keeping one's face clean was the best thing for it. Beyond that, avoiding the sun was also helpful. She soon became known for her creamy, porcelain-like complexion.
Her products were based on old-fashioned home treatments, with herbs and fruits used as the basis for cleansers and moisturizers. That emphasis was never more apparent than during a facial treatment, when a client would lean over a steaming bowl of herb-saturated water with a large towel tented over her head.
By the early 1990s, Klinger was reporting annual sales of $20 million, with mail order as part of her business. She rejected offers to franchise her products and sell them in department stores.
"I don't want to be the biggest, only the best, and that means we must maintain personal control," she told Time magazine in 1981.
That personal control at the salon level started in 1938, when Klinger and a local doctor opened for business in her native Brno. The following year, at the outbreak of World War II, she and her three brothers fled Eastern Europe for London. From there, she moved to New York City. In 1941, she opened her first U.S. salon with a $15,000 bank loan.
"Everybody said it was crazy to start a business during the war," Klinger said in an interview with The Times in 1982. "We had so much difficulty getting jars, tops and raw material. I made the preparations myself."
She married Jacobo Eisenberg, an international lawyer, and they lived in a Park Avenue apartment with English antiques and Native American artifacts, a few blocks from her salon.
