The other evening, Revlon, the big cosmetics company, threw a party in the first-floor-accessories department (hats, gloves, scarves, cosmetics, things like that) of Bloomingdale’s, to celebrate the opening of the movie Mahogany, starring Diana Ross, and to introduce a new line of “Orient-inspired” colors, called China Bronze, in their Touch & Glow makeup. Since Miss Ross is the model for Touch & Glow in the movie, we naturally assumed that China Bronze was another line of colors for black women. Great. Black is beautiful, true, but it never hurts to try to be more beautiful. Well, we were wrong.
At the party, we walked in and immediately had our picture taken by a couple of photographers from Polaroid, who then pasted the photograph on a black piece of cardboard and told us that this framed picture of us was taken by the SX-70 camera. We checked out a rumor that Diana Ross might make an appearance and were told that she was in California, about to have a baby. We looked around and saw Tony
Perkins, who also stars in the movie, wearing a denim shirt and denim pants; Ben Vereen, wearing a handsome black velvet suit, which he told us was designed specially for him by Jacques Bellini; Jacques Bellini, wearing a handsome black velvet jacket, which he told us he had designed for himself; some unrecognizable well-dressed, smiling people eating Chinese-style spareribs and fried chicken; lots of other unrecognizable well-dressed, smiling people drinking champagne; and more unrecognizable well-dressed, smiling people watching scenes from Mahogany, on a color television set. What we didn’t see were any black women who looked as if they might be wearing the new China Bronze colors.
Just as we were about to inquire what, exactly, was going on, a slim, pretty, non-black young woman, wearing a cluster of yellow flowers in her hair, a brightly colored shirt, and black pants, came up to us and said that her name was Kathy Fields, that she was a makeup consultant for Revlon, that she was with the China Bronze “collection,” and that she was actually wearing one of the new hues. We took a good look at her face. It was cherry red, as if she had just stuck it in a hot oven. “I think it’s a dynamite look,” she said.
“But aren’t these colors for black women?” we asked.
“Well, yes,” she said. “But—”
Before she could finish, a very light-complexioned Negro man who was standing nearby jumped in and said, “No, they aren’t.”
The man introduced himself as Ron Marablé, beauty consultant for Revlon. Then he told us, “They’re not black cosmetics.
People are no longer into that. There is no longer such a thing as black cosmetics. We don’t believe there is a different makeup for different people. There are many different skin tones in the world, and black is just one of them. I know. I went to art school for eight years, and then I went to Europe. I did Sophia Loren in Rome. I studied with her makeup artist for a year. I have done Melba Moore, Freda Payne, Nina Simone, Virna Lisi, Nancy Wilson, and—oh, Coretta King. Don’t forget that. She was my favorite—Coretta King. I used to be the beauty editor for Ebony. I used to do before-and-after—I would take a woman and make her over. I would take an ugly woman and make her pretty. But this is a makeup for any woman. Any woman can wear it. We have a range of colors here. Bronze, copper, rust—all the warm earth colors. They’re going over well. On the first day, we sold three thousand dollars. Today, we did twenty-five hundred. And tomorrow we hope to do over three thousand.”
—October 27, 1975