Fire and Ice

This is the story of one of the most powerful, controversial and ruthless self-made men in American business history. Charles Revson started with one bottle of nail polish and a fine ear for female fantasy and built an empire -the Revlon Company-worth millions from them. Revson became as legendary as the com- pany he built. He was a man who combined the same glittering contradictions expressed in his famous campaign. He was fire; he was ice-even to the women who slept with him. Marketing genius, power broker, firer, hirer, flatterer, hypochondriac, adoring husband, philanderer, skinflint and big spender, Revson became the subject of several novels and hun- dreds of gossip columnists words. But the glamorous, cutthroat cosmetics industry-a world of top models, big spending, and fierce competitiveness, for formulas and campaigns -the bright and beautiful life reported along the city s chicest grapevines, was only part of the tale. Revson fired and hired top executives with a devastating, high-speed revolving door technique that earned him a reputation as the world s richest son of a bitch.