This lavishly illustrated volume opens a window into the
world of one of the most extravagant and wide-ranging style-makers of
the last century, a pioneer of the cosmetics industry who was also
celebrated for the daring and prescience of her art collecting, her
decorating, and her personal couture. Four hundred vintage images and a
meticulously researched text, including 16 essays by renowned experts in
the fields of art and interior design, illuminate and trace the public
and private lives of Helena Rubinstein. Rubinstein's bold and
influential flair for decor - sleekly modern at times, and at other
times a wildly eclectic sampling from different eras - was showcased
globally in her beauty salons and in her glamorous residences in New
York, Paris, and the South of France. An astute patron, she invested in
artworks by the luminaries of Parisian bohemia just as they began their
ascent. Her vast collection included tapestries by Picasso and Rouault,
paintings by Dégas, Dufy, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, and Monet, as well
as murals by Dalí. Her striking instinct for fashion (she wore Worth and
Poiret at first, and Balenciaga and St. Laurent 60 years later) and her
famous overscaled jewelry kept her in the public eye, decade after
decade. Rubinstein's vibrant character, reflected in her personal style
and in the interiors of her homes and salons, is captured here in works
by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Brassaï, André Kertész, Dora
Maar, and Man Ray - many of which have never before been published. When
the flamboyant and decisive Helena Rubinstein died in 1965, at the age
of 94, her huge collections were dispersed. But in these pages her world
comes alive again: Over the Top is a unique record of the passionate
life and style of this self-made mogul and the century she helped
define.