There's a comic irony underlying "The Powder and the Glory," a smart new PBS documentary about two pioneers of the cosmetics industry. During their lives, entrepreneurial giants Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein chose never to meet, even while they lived and worked in the same neighborhood. They were rivals of the first order. But here they are, stuck side by side in the same film, twin symbols of the dramatic changes in the beauty business in the 20th century.
"The Powder and the Glory," which airs tonight at 10 on Channel 2, portrays two women who came from radically different backgrounds, but who shared an acute understanding of a woman's right to wear what she pleased. They took a type of product that, until the early 20th century, was identified with prostitution and impropriety, and they fused it with female self-esteem. While the film is a dual biography of Arden and Rubinstein, it is also a portrait of a century of changing mores.
