A beauty day with Victoria Principal will benefit cancer research.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
When it comes to selling anything associated with her billion-dollar skin care industry, actress and Malibu resident Victoria Principal has, well, principles.
This Saturday, locals unfamiliar with the products Principal manufactures will have the opportunity to sample the Principal Secret Skin Care line for free, nosh on “essential” dark chocolate, schmooze and connect with other women in what is billed as “Beauty Day for Face & Body”-all to benefit cancer research.
“We are a little beach town and there’s a certain community cohesiveness,” Principal said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “The Beauty Day is for our people to really connect and share as women. In many ways, the basis of life lies in a connection with other women’s spirits.”
When Principal first started developing a skin care line in the ’70s, it had less to do with women’s spirits than with figuring out how to deal with a bad case of adult acne-something unwelcome at that point of her burgeoning career in television and film.
“My doctors were prescribing antibiotics every time I began a shoot and my stomach reacted badly,” Principal said. “Finally, I said I can’t live like this.”
She began consulting with allergists and dermatologists, who developed three products with which Principal saw immediate results. Her friends borrowed her skin care materials and, when they didn’t return them, Principal knew she was filling a market need.
Since then, Principal has been intimately involved in every aspect of creating a beauty line, from development to packaging and marketing to keeping a firm grip on quality control. She became a member of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists. She traveled to Sacramento to meet with the governor to press for legislation prohibiting animal testing in cosmetics manufacturing-an abiding Principal principle-along with a commitment to manufacturing everything in the United States.
One of her most prescient decisions was to take her pitch straight to the consumer through direct sales via infomercials. Although the idea was looked at skeptically by her talent agency at the time, it is a concept that has become the prevailing marketing mantra of the day, thanks to the Internet.
“In 1989, the agency rep-ing me basically threatened to fire me,” Principal said. “My career was pretty successful at that point and they thought this venture was doomed to fail and that it would reflect on them.”
On the contrary, Principal’s business went viral and, along with her publishing empire of several books on skin and health care, her sales jumped to more than a billion dollars by 2004. In 1995, she was named “Entertainment Business Woman of the Year” by the National Association of Women Business Owners.
“I always believed in the medium of directs sales,” Principal said. “I write all my own scripts and oversee all casting, editing and production. Just like I did with my movies. But I stand one hundred percent behind my products. So the first time someone buys something from my line, it might be because of me. But the second time, they buy it because of the product.”
In the mid-90s, Principal developed a skincare product designed specifically for women who had been treated with radiation and for scarring, thinking that if it could help such traumatized skin, it would work wonders for healthy skin.
The Advanced line of Principal Secret is used today at George Washington and Cedars-Sinai medical centers, as well as being distributed to shelters for abused women who have suffered facial scarring. In keeping with her advocacy for abused women, Principal serves as co-chair of the L.A. County Domestic Violence Council Community Advisory Board.
As a celebration of what she calls “20 years of beauty” and, basically, to have a party with her adopted home since 1973, Principal is throwing open the doors to the shop The Beauty Collection in the Malibu Village (on Cross Creek Road), inviting women to browse, sample, share stories, connect as neighbors and partake of the philosophy that no day is complete without a small bit of dark chocolate, a theory that Oprah Winfrey has dubbed “The Chocolate Principle.”
Principal said she became involved with cancer research while providing skin care products to George Washington University Medical Center and it continues to be one of her philanthropic priorities. Saying cancer is “epidemic” in every form, she plans to donate proceeds from the beauty day to cancer research centers.
KD Farris is a Topanga resident who has been using Principal Secret products for several years now. She first heard about the line through Principal’s infomercials and is a firm adherent.
“Imagine finding something this good, promoted by a celebrity that is actually affordable,” Farris said. “I’m a big hiker and even her sunscreen doesn’t clog pores or dry out your skin. It seems like, with each new product line, there’s a quantum shift in the quality.”
When asked if she plans on attending this weekend’s “Day of Beauty,” Farris was unequivocal.
“Will there be chocolate? Absolutely!”
Beauty Day for Face & Body will take place Saturday, Nov. 21, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at The Beauty Collection in Malibu Village on Cross Creek Road. More information can be obtained by calling The Beauty Collection at 310.317.0117.