Aida Grey- A Legend in Aesthetics

She has drawn to her the world’s most beautiful women, advising them in the science of skin care and the art of makeup. Her personal clients include First Lady Nancy Reagan, Their Royal Highnesses Princess Caroline of Monaco, Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands, Queen Nor of Jordan, Princess Benedikte of Denmark, Princess Astrid of Norway, Princess Christina of Sweden, Madame Jehan Sadat, Beverly Sills, Jacqueline Bisset, Julie Christie, Peter Fonda and Madonna, to name just a few. In addition to European Royalty, great beauties of the jet set and favorite theatrical and film starts, her wide range of followers also includes professional women from the business world, social leaders, homemakers and their teenage daughters. She is Aida Grey, for more than 40 years the innovative international authority on beauty, and her Institute De Beauty in Beverly Hills is a Mecca for the famous and the successful.

In Beverly Hills, Ms. Grey is brought into daily contact with the worlds most talented and influential people, many of whom have become her hear friends. She created Debbie Reynolds’s makeup for her “Playboy” layout (story written by Mrs. Irving Wallace), and she is still a client and as beautiful as ever with young, supple and lovely skin. “Which, according to Ms. Grey “requires constant moisturizing?” Jane Fonda has been a client, as well as her father and brother. Nancy Sinatra is a longtime friend and customer. In fact, Aida takes care of the entire family, including her brother. Jacqueline Bisset is always charming gracious in the salon, and Is one of the few women who looks ravishing even without a drop of makeup. Suzanne Pleshette is a special favorite who Ms. Grey has been taking care of for some time. She comes to the salon for a facial; occasionally a makeup or brow shaping entering quietly through the back door, never making a fuss, but when she enters the salon comes alive with her sparkle and wit. Ms. Grey has often sent one of her aestheticians to service Ann Margaret at her production location.

Other Aida Grey patrons past and present include: Shelly Duvall, Lauren Hutton, Cher, Charo, Mrs. Ed McMahon, Ann Francis, Slim Pickens, Julie Christie, Lillian Hellman, Agnes De Mille, Bo Derek, Sally Kellerman, Cheryl Tiegs, Ingrid Bergman, Margo Fontayne, Tatum O’Neal, Cheryl Ladd, Barbra Steisand, Diane Cannon, Cathy Lee Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, Barbra Walters, Donald Sutherland, Natalie Wood, Leslie Uggams, Stephanie Powers, Phyllis George Brown, Lee Grant, Robert Stack, Jane Russell, Connie Chung, Betsy Bloomingdale, Hal Linden and Linda Ronstadt, to name just a few.

Aida Grey prides herself on being an individual and cherished individuality in others. It is the reverences for individuality that has been the cornerstone in the development of the Aida Grey skin care and makeup products.

“Aida Grey is a name with a series of firsts’ after it,” quoting Harper’s Bazaar (September 1986). “She coined the term ‘skin care’ to describe the service she brought to American women 50 years ago; she pioneered the use of natural ingredients -- herbs, flowers, fruits, vegetables and seaweeds--in order to treat her own sensitive skin; and she began using DNA ampoules in skincare -- before anyone else, of course.” to was 37 years ago that Aida Grey came out with a honey and almond pore cleanser, a concept that today is imitated by many skin care lines.

The world of cosmetics is Aida Grey’s heritage. She became interested as a young girl in France and was encouraged by her favorite aunt, a cosmetic chemist. And them her father was a dermatologist--the same living father who had the name Aida waiting for her when she was born. Music was a passion with him, grand opera most of all. “My father taught me that the truly valuable things in life were never meant to be personal possessions but rather a legacy to be passed on. The enthralling world of beauty, and the knowledge that I have gained on how to use it, not just as an end in itself but to give fullness to life, is my legacy.”

Ms. Grey studied biochemistry, cosmetic chemistry and makeup artistry, and served an apprenticeship in Beauty Ateliers in Paris, Madrid and Rome. In New York she continues her study of chemistry while experimenting with cosmetics and makeup techniques and working closely with the medical profession, as she does today. Before moving to California in the late 1940’s, Ms. Grey returned to the continent where she inaugurated her skin care like--one of the most extensive ever created.

Aida Grey has devoted her life to the science of skin care and long ago recognized the vital and essential benefits of the use of natural substances in the creation of skin care and beauty aids designed to cope with the stresses and tensions of modern living along with its environmental pollutants. Through her continuing research she has developed natural preparations which when used in individually designed skin care programs effectively arrest the ageing of the skin.

Her scientific approach to personalized skin care was developed through studies with the world’s leading dermatologists and plastic surgeons for which she now holds symposiums at various universities and conventions. Her divergent search for the latest discoveries in scientific and medical research have led to the creation of skin care products that effectively employ ginseng, hyaluronic acid and RNA/DNA compounds. Aida Grey’s firm belief in all things natural extends to the methods practiced in her Beverly Hills salon as well.

Ms. Grey stresses that beauty is a woman’s natural birthright and that it can be fully realized through the use of proper cosmetic application and regular skin care routine. For maximum long term benefits, attention must be given to the complexion even before adolescence, for the Aida Grey method is -- in essence-- a ritual. The longer it is practiced, the greater are its benefits. Just as no two individuals are exactly alike, neither are any two skin types exactly the same, nor the individual skin care regimens they requite. If you seek the befits of an Aida Grey skin care program you may pay her a personal visit at her Beverly Hills Salon (she sees all clients by appointment), consult with a member of her expert staff, visit one of her more than 75 franchises where the staff has been trained by her personally, or write to her in care of “Beauty By Mail” many thousands of Aida Grey’s most devoted clients take advantage of this very personal mail order service where they receive the individual attention Ms. Grey feels is so necessary for the proper care of the skin and the use of her products.

Aida Grey is also a distinguished and internationally recognized makeup artist. “In the days when makeup was applied too heavily, with cement like, painted pancake look,” recalls Ms. Grey, “I concentrated instead on a classic natural look to bring out the special beauty of the individual,” And, Aida Grey products are not for women only. Aida Grey is a firm believer-- as are more and more of the opposite sex-- that facials, sun-blocks and moisturizers are just as essential in keeping a man young looking and free from the ravages of the environment as they are to a woman. “Men need to be educated that men’s and women’s skin is absolutely the same and need to be care for properly,” insists Ms. Grey. “Skin has no sex you know.”

Quite naturally, her list of male clients is increasing daily. Few men get past scrutiny without a pat on the cheek to check out the elasticity and condition of their skin, perhaps some advice on the proper shaping of their beard or mustache, or a subtle suggestion that darker eye brows can make a distinguished face more youthful.

Aida Grey travels across the county lecturing at her carious salons. the popularity of her cosmetics is attested to by the fact that her franchises are not only located in the United States, but in Europe and Africa as well. She appears regularly at the nationally renowned department store Bullock’s Wilshire, where her products are sold and services rendered, giving women indicial skin care analysis and holding panel discussions to provide her clients with the total care that she believes is so necessary to a beautiful, healthy skin. At her Beverly Hills salon she also takes care of pre and post operative chemical peel and plastic surgery patients. She is in constant demand by psychologist and psychiatrists for special consultations and makeovers. At the top of her profession, Aida Frey is on the advisory board of the Fashion Institute, is past president of Fashion Circle West, and belongs to numerous businesses, civic and social organizations. She is constantly asked to write articles for magazines and newspapers, and she and her products have been the subjects to important articles in “Vogue”, “Harper’s Bazaar”, Elle”, “Mademoiselle”, and “Women’s Wear Daily”, to name just a few. She has had her own television shoe, and makes regular appearances on television and radio programs across the country.

Aida Grey’s inexhaustible energy still allows her time for charitable works, in particular making regular appearances-- lecturing and providing skin care demonstrations -- for the teenage drug abuse program at Coldwater Canyon Hospital, the inmates at the Sybil Brand Institute (the largest female penal institution in California), the Ingleside Hospital for Metal Health, the Santa Monica Hospital for the Partially Sighted, and the Senior Health and Peer Counseling Center of Santa Monica.

“The reason cosmetics are so important in jails and hospitals,” insists Ms. Grey, “is that makeup can help you psychologically. A woman must feel pretty. If she likes herself, the world will like her. If she does not feel good about herself, she won’t like anybody. In a real beauty, the power of positive thinking makes her radiant. Beauty has many, many different faces and everyone has beauty within them. There isn’t a person born without something beautiful. Every woman needs to recognize this and not look for a perfect set of features. I can take the plainest façade and make it beautiful for a woman who had inner beauty.” Aida Grey’s first and very successful publication “The Aida Grey Beauty Book” is an encyclopedia of skin care and a complete guide and is in the Library of Congress. ‘This book will be followed shortly be her second book, “How to Grow Old and Stay Young.”

For Aida Frey, beauty begins at home, within the individual: “It’s your attitude toward beauty that’s so important,” says Grey. “It’s like the positive and negative of a picture. A smile can transform the plainest face to radiance and a frown robs the most beautiful soul. that’s the important lesson I try to tech the women I work with, whether they come into the studio, are one of the mail order customers we see only once a year, or are in a hospital or a prison. Anger is the enemy of beauty; anger is a useless emotion, it’s a double-edged sword that wounds at both ends. That is my first beauty lesson to any woman, no matter where she is.”