Sydell L. Miller, self-made eyelash and hair care mogul, dies at 86
Sydell L. Miller, a self-made beauty mogul who went from being the stay-at-home wife of a Cleveland salon owner to a Palm Beach mansion so immense that it would reportedly take an hour to walk through all the rooms, died on February 25 in her home in Cleveland. She was 86.
Her daughter Stacie Halpern confirmed the death. Mrs. Miller had several health problems, including serious heart problems to date until the early 1990s; Ms Halpern said a combination of factors had recently caused her mother’s health to deteriorate.
Mrs. Miller and her husband, Arnold Miller, created two dominant brands: Ardell, the industry standard for abundant and beautifully shaped false eyelashes, and Matrix Essentials, which is often described as the largest manufacturer of salon products in the country and was the leading source of The Mrs. Miller’s fortune. In 1994, two years after her husband’s death, Bristol Myers bought Squibb Matrix from Mrs. Miller for $400 million.
Both companies have made lasting changes in the way people around the world prepare, whether in front of the mirror at home or in a salon. The Millers invented the first pre-cut eyelash kit and false eyelash strips, cutting procedure time from hours to minutes. They also changed the way hairdressers colored hair, creating cream-based (rather than liquid) dyes that allowed precise application and gave hairdressers control over a range of mixable colors, as if they were painters—not so much beauticians as aesthetes.
Brush-like tools and color swatches that the Millers introduced are now familiar parts of salon routines; The couple also debuted products that made it easier to perform a number of complex hair treatments, such as a perm and a dye, in one go.
Their innovations had two general qualities in common: they increased the convenience of beauty routines and gave hairdressers more creative options.
Ms. Miller’s fellow Palm Beach plutocrats called her the “Shampoo Lady,” The Wall Street Journal reported in 2005.
The nickname was a comic understatement. Mrs. Miller owned works of art by Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and Lichtenstein. In 2019 they 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 project. That year, she 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: reporters disagree on whether it contained 19 or 22 bathrooms. Facilities include an ice cream stand, a sweet shop and a bowling alley. In his book “Madness under the royal palms” (2009), Laurence Leamer described La Rêverie as so beyond the human scale that it resembled a “train station or state library.”
In another book, “Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace” (2019), Mr. Leamer reported that Ms. Miller was one of the first members of Mar-a-Lago, about a half-mile away from La Reverie. Her other neighbors were billionaires Ken Griffin and Steve Schwarzman.
The origins of this dazzling wealth could hardly have been more homely.
Sydell Lois Lubin was born on August 10, 1937 in Cleveland. Her father, Jack, owned a furniture store, and her mother, Evelyne (Saltzman) Lubin, spent more time playing cards and smoking cigars than the average 1950s housewife.
Sydell (pronounced SIHD-ell) attended the University of Miami for two years and then returned to Cleveland. A friend suggested she get her hair cut by Arnold Miller, a man in his mid-20s from her community of working- and middle-class Jews from Cleveland who had opened his own salon.
They got into a fascinating conversation and she said he made her hair look great. The young man asked her out. “What night?” she asked. “All of them,” he replied.
His next client, who waited out the prolonged flirtation, started cursing.
“Take it easy,” the young man said told her when Sydell left. “See that little blonde walking out the door? I’m going to marry her.”
He asked her to marry him after a week; they married in 1958.
Mr. Miller assumed Sydell would be a housewife. When his receptionist called in sick one day, she showed up in the salon and announced she would help with the phones. Soon she was running her own women’s clothing boutique above the salon.
It was Mrs. Miller who conducted the first experiments to simplify eyelash decoration. The couple took their invention on a trip to a trade show in the Chicago suburbs.
They applied about 100 sets of eyelashes to showgoers, but didn’t sell a single set. They agreed over dinner that the initiative was a failure, but still returned to the show the next day, after signing up for two days.
They found a line of about 60 women waiting for them.
“They didn’t believe the story that they could shower, swim or sleep and the eyelashes would still be on,” Ms. Miller recalled in a 2017 report. interview with Modern Salon magazine. “They kept saying, ‘Look! They are there. They stay.’ Within fifteen minutes we sold out everything we had.”
That success led the Millers to found Ardell. When their product line became a hit at pharmacies, they turned to catering for hairdressers. They sold Ardell and started Matrix.
The couple divided their duties by having Mr. Miller as the public face and Mrs. Miller as the business manager. Early on, she kept company inventory manually until midnight. They all got the same salary and the same size offices.
In later years, Mrs. Miller donated significant sums of money, including a $70 million family gift to the Cleveland Clinic.
In addition to Mrs. Halpern, Mrs. Miller is survived by a daughter, Lauren Spilman; a brother, Dennis Lubin; four grandchildren; three great-granddaughters; and two cousins whom she considered grandchildren.
Underlying the Millers’ business strategy was the belief that hairdressers had missed out on the kind of commercial innovations, corporate attention and social dignity they deserved. Matrix succeeded because the company won the trust of hairdressers.
In her Modern Salon interview, Ms. Miller argued the importance of hairdressers to society. They are advisors, she said. They see their customers in good times and bad. They collect information about them that few others know. For the kind of older customer who rarely goes out, they can be essential point of regular social contact.
“I love hairdressers: there is no one in the world who gives more of themselves to their clients,” she said. “What we wanted to do with Matrix was give them back a way to grow, excel and build a good image of what they give to their people.”