Thursday, November 18, 1999

Much ado about nothing

With great fanfare and splash beauty.com had a great big launch party about nothing on Thursday, November 18th. Their site might be up, but you can't do anything except subscribe to be notified of when they launch and "share" you opinion about why you'd buy beauty products online. There were more anorexic women and drag queens that you could shake a stick at and a handful of very large breasted creatures that I honestly couldn't tell if they were a man or woman! Throw in a few new media types -- like Howard Koval of iPace.com, who told me his company that offers a personalized travel planning service for world class cities just got his first round of funding. I walked around the clean-feeling bar with white panels over fluorescent under-lighting and juices in the spacious loft. I observed the drag queens mimicking beauty routines in little performed vignettes.

And then the whole night just got 100%+ better. Who should I see next buy my fabulous cousin, Alexa Pulitzer, up from New Orleans! With a fabulous rich paisley-pattered scarf around her shoulders she told me how things are going in textile design at Wemco (the world's largest tie manufacturer) and her printing business. We caught up a bit and then I left her to her friend and I met up with Richard Laermer of RLM PR. He whispered he's got a scoop for me and Joseph DeCola of NBC News (Today-Weekend Edition) handed me a beautiful peach- pink rose to take home, which was infinitely better than beauty.com's "take-home"--a sheet of plexi-glass holding a plastic coupon for $100 in products from the site that isn't yet.