Sydell L. Miller, a self-made beauty mogul who went from being the wife of a Cleveland salon owner to a Palm Beach mansion so vast it was said to take an hour to walk through all its rooms, has died. on February 25 at her home in Cleveland. It was 86.
Her daughter Stacie Halpern confirmed the death. Mrs. Miller had various health problems, including serious heart problems appointment in the early 1990s; Ms Halpern said a combination of factors had caused her mother’s health to decline recently.
Ms. Miller and her husband, Arnold Miller, created two dominant brands: Ardell, the industry standard for voluminous and shapely false eyelashes, and Matrix Essentials, which has often been described as the nation’s largest manufacturer of salon products and was the primary source The estate of Mrs. Miller. In 1994, two years after her husband’s death, Bristol Myers Squibb bought Matrix from Mrs. Miller for $400 million.
Both companies made lasting changes to the way people around the world get ready, both at home in front of a mirror and in a living room. The Millers invented the first false eyelash and strip kit, cutting the procedure time from hours to minutes. They also changed the way hairdressers colored hair, creating cream-based (rather than liquid) dyes that allowed for precise application and giving hairdressers control over a range of colors that could be mixed, as if they were painters – not so aesthetic as aesthetic.
The brush-like tools and color swatches introduced by the Millers are now familiar parts of the salon routine. The couple also debuted products that made it easy to do some complex hair treatments, like perms and dyes, in one trip.
Their innovations shared two general qualities: They increased the convenience of beauty routines and gave hairdressers more creative possibilities.
Ms. Miller’s fellow Palm Beach plutocrats called her the “Shampoo Lady,” The Wall Street Journal mentionted in 2005.
The nickname was a comedic understatement. Mrs. Miller had works of art by Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and Lichtenstein. In 2019, she set the record for the most expensive condo purchase in Palm Beach history, paying more than $40 million for an entire floor of a new construction. That year broke another real estate record when she sold her oceanfront home, La Rêverie, for $111 million, making it the most expensive home sale in Palm Beach County.
The vastness of the property defied description: Journalists disagreed over whether it contained 19 or 22 bathrooms. Its facilities included an ice cream stand, a candy store, and a bowling alley. In his book “Madness under the royal palms” (2009), Laurence Leamer described La Rêverie as so beyond human scale that it resembled “a railway station or a state library”.
In another Book, “Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at the Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace” (2019), Mr. Leamer said Ms. Miller was an early member of Mar-a-Lago, located about half a mile away from La Dreaming. Her other neighbors were billionaires Ken Griffin and Steve Schwarzman.
The origins of this dazzling wealth could hardly have been more domestic.
Sydell Lois Lubin was born on August 10, 1937 in Cleveland. Her father, Jack, owned a furniture store, and her mother, Evelyn (Saltzman) Lubin, played more cards and smoked more cigars than your average mid-century housewife.
Sydell (pronounced SIHD-ell) attended the University of Miami for two years before returning to Cleveland. A friend suggested she get her hair done by Arnold Miller, a man in his 20s from Cleveland’s working-class and middle-class Jewish community who had opened his own salon.
They got into a fascinating conversation and she said he had made her hair look great. The young man asked her out. “What night?” asked. “All of them,” he replied.
His next customer, expecting the protracted flirtation, began to curse.
“Slow down,” the young man he said her as Sydell left. “See that little blonde coming out the door? I will marry her.”
He proposed to her after a week. they married in 1958.
Mr. Miller assumed that Sindel would be a housewife. One day, when the receptionist called in sick, he appeared in the living room and announced that he would help with the phones. Soon, she was running her own women’s clothing boutique above the living room.
It was Mrs. Miller who made the first experiments to simplify the adornment of eyelashes. The couple took their invention on the road, traveling to a trade show in suburban Chicago.
They put about 100 sets of eyelashes on show attendees but didn’t sell a single set. They agreed over dinner that the initiative was a failure, but returned to the show the next day anyway, having signed on for two days.
They found a line of about 60 women waiting for them.
“They didn’t believe the story that they could shower or swim or sleep and the eyelashes would still be open,” Ms. Miller recalled in a 2017. interview with Modern Salon magazine. “They kept saying, ‘Look! It is there. Stay”. In 15 minutes, we sold out everything we had.”
This success led the Millers to create Ardell. When their line of products became a hit in drugstores, they focused on targeting hair salons. They sold Ardell and started Matrix.
The couple split their duties with Mr. Miller as public figure and Ms. Miller as corporate manager. Early on, he counted the company’s inventory by hand, working until midnight. Each of them had the same salary and offices of the same size.
In the following years, Ms. Miller donated significant sums of money, including a family of $70 million gift at the Cleveland Clinic.
In addition to Ms. Halpern, Ms. Miller has another daughter, Lauren Spielman. a brother, Dennis Lubin; four grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and two nephews whom he considered grandchildren.
Underlying the Millers’ business strategy was the belief that salons lacked the kind of commercial innovation, corporate attention and social respectability they deserved. Matrix succeeded because the company gained the trust of hairdressers.
In her interview with Modern Salon, Ms. Miller argued for the importance of hairdressers to society. They are consultants, he said. They see their clients through good times and bad. They gather information about them that few others know. For the kind of older customer who rarely goes out, it may be necessary point of regular social contact.
“I love salons: There is no one in the world who gives more of themselves to their customers,” she said. “What we wanted to do with Matrix was give them back a way to grow, excel and build a proper image of what they give their people.”