However, with so many grey school uniforms in the house, Eve decided that she now wanted to make a difference in her own life, as well as others, and become a professional beauty therapist. During the early 1960s, beauty therapy was one of the most expensive school careers which you could pursue. Professional beauty schools were both rare and costly to the majority of women wishing to join the industry. Eve decided to take the plunge and start classes at a local college in London, taking subjects covering both beauty therapy and cosmetic chemistry. The courses would last over two years, all of which were part time. As a result, Eve started to learn her new profession by day at college and then sell cosmetics at night from her home in order to pay for her new chosen career's education. She had great determination, commitment and drive to succeed in the profession. It was just the start of demonstrating how Eve's drive and inspiration to others would manifest, following her formal graduation and into the UK Beauty Profession.
Eve went on to build a very successful home visiting practice, meeting demands from local schools for her lectures on skin care for school leavers, as the 1960s were just waking up to professional beauty in the UK on a major scale, thanks to UK pioneers like Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, and so on.
Also, in the early 1960s, Eve attended a lecture on essential oils and aromatherapy by an Austrian lady, Madame Marguerite Maury. This lecture was to change her life completely as she wanted to learn more about essential oils and how they could influence a person's total well-being and complete skin care needs.
Eve always wanted to learn more and add new skills to help her in her new-found career as a beauty therapist. It was this desire to learn more that would help shape Eve Taylor's career path and destiny as an industry pioneer for decades to come.
But it was not until 1968 that Eve's professional career started to really take shape when she opened her very first beauty salon in London and then published her own book, Face, Figure & Fashion.
Eve still wanted to go further; she wanted to master the aromatherapy techniques needed to perfect her treatments. She then decided to study with Micheline Arcier in London. Aromatherapy was still in its infancy across the world in the 1960s and seen by some as being way ahead of its time and very "hocus pocus." Many therapists did not have the belief that this treatment could provide such stunning results.
In 1969, Eve developed her own private range of skin care products. But it was her expertise in essential oil formulations and an impressive knowledge of aromatherapy that really helped put her firmly on the world's "Beauty Industry Radar" and helped raise her professional, personal and business reputation. In 1972, Eve also decided to open her second salon in Sevenoaks, Kent, one of the largest in the UK.
Eve has always been fascinated with new treatments/techniques/products (such as the early body wraps systems) and always keeps a keen eye on the trends. At one stage, Eve taught professional ear piercing at her salon premises in Kent; one of her models was Lady Diana Spencer, known more widely to many as Diana the Princess of Wales.
In the mid 1970s, things really started to fall in place. Eve had fully mastered both her aromatherapy treatment techniques and created one of the world's first range of professional pre-blended aromatherapy treatment oils for clinical use for both the face and body. It was at this point that Eve decided to teach her own aromatherapy courses across the UK and beyond.
In 1976, Eve Taylor was invited by one of her former students to teach her own aromatherapy classes at the Annette Hanson School, based in the Empire State Building in New York. In 1983, Eve was invited to teach at International Dermal Institute, at the time a newly formed school in California. This collaboration strengthened over the years with its original founder Jane Martin (now Jane Wurwand).
Eve then started to develop a fantastic network internationally with some of the world's leading beauty schools and experts within the industry, such as the Isa Carstens Academy in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It was through people like Isa Carstens, Annette Hanson and Jane Wurwand, among others, that Eve was able to share her knowledge and create a whole new market for aromatherapy as a professional treatment.
Eve was, for many, the original modern day pioneer that helped establish aromatherapy and its popularity in the profession and to their clients. In 1981, Eve achieved a personal ambition and opened her own school in London which was to be known as the "Institute of Clinical Aromatherapy," now known as the "International Institute of Clinical Aromatherapy," with her original techniques being taught in the UK and then worldwide.
As part of Eve Taylor's lifelong learning, she also studied with a Chinese doctor and learned about a whole new way of looking at clients using oriental analysis (such as reading their face and feet). This technique helped her understand what the cause and effect may have been in a person's life before any treatment would be given and ensured that the client gained maximum benefit from the experience. Even today, many therapists struggle to fully understand the concept of "total well-being." There are many things that the professional therapist can influence, but we are who we are because of what we inherit, experience, and eat – everything that happens in a person's life leaves a mark.
Eve's enthusiasm and passion for education and training also led her into campaign for even higher professional beauty standards of education across the world in an effort to protect and ensure that the public only went to qualified therapists. This also led to Eve becoming the co-chief examiner for the City & Guilds London for Beauty Therapy, which she held for seven years, so that she could lead the profession from the front. Eve also then became the secretary for education for the Confederation of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology (CIBTAC). In 1991, Eve Taylor was made Chairman of the UK's leading Beauty Profession Association, British Association of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology (BABTAC).
But it was clearly the aromatherapy treatment that was to make the name of Eve Taylor popular around the world and within the professional beauty industry as a whole. She was promoting the aromatherapy treatment and use of pre-blended oils long before many had seen its true potential – this was also the new frontier for holistic therapies across the world as aromatherapy was the early pioneer for acceptance by the masses.
In the early 1990s, Eve Taylor decided to relocate her school to Cambridgeshire in England, but still continues to travel and teach worldwide today as the demand exists to only have Eve Taylor as the teacher in the class.
In January 2008, Eve Taylor was recognized by Her Majesty the Queen of England in the UK New Year's Honours List. This was a great achievement for all concerned, the industry, the profession, as well as for the formal recognition of Eve Taylor's own personal crusade and contribution to what has now become a worldwide and growing aromatherapy industry.
Aromatherapy as a professional treatment has now become inextricably linked with Eve Taylor's name throughout the world. Many of her former students have gone on to establish their own names in aromatherapy which, in itself, is a true legacy to the aromatherapy profession and the real benefits of using essential oils as part of a complete well-being treatment. And with her many former students across the world now running successful businesses, it is great to know that a little bit of Eve Taylor's early inspiration, born in the 1960s, is still alive and well today.