Queer Places:
4, rue de la Paix, Paris, France
Le Ciro's,Casino Barrière, Rue Edmond Blanc, 14800 Deauville, France
Maison Desti, 347
Fifth Avenue, New York
23 East Ninth Street, New York
6, 7 and 8 Old Bond Street, London
4 West Fifty Seventh Street, New York
603 5th
Avenue, New York
Mary Estelle Dempsey (later known as Mary Desti or Mary D'Este) (October
10, 1871 - April 12, 1931) was the owner of Desti Beauty Products cosmetics firm and New York City studio which
sold art objects, perfumes, and clothing.
Isadora Duncan's longtime friend
was the cosmetics and perfume entrepreneur Mary Desti. Duncan was staying at
Desti's house in Italy when she had her fatal accident. Desti wrote The untold
story: the life of Isadora Duncan, 1921-1927 (1929). Mary Desti was also a
lover and collaborator of the occultist,
Aleister Crowley. She was
styled by him "The Scarlet Woman, Whore of Babylon", a compliment, in
Crowley's view.
Mary Estelle Dempsey was born on October 10, 1871 in Quebec, Canada, the
daughter of Catherine Campbell Smyth and Dominick d'Este Dempsey, immigrants
from Ireland. She was the mother of Preston Sturges, playwright, screenwriter,
and film director (in 1941, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for
the film The Great McGinty, his first of three nominations in the category);
the father was travelling salesman Edmund C. Biden (1871-1935), whom she
married on July 14, 1897. Mary claimed to have been 15
when Preston was born–she was actually 27–and 16 when she entered medical
school, which she wasn’t, and didn’t.
When her son was three years old, Desti left America to pursue a singing
career in Paris, where she annulled her marriage to Biden. On her first day in
town, Mary met a Mrs Duncan whose daughter, Isadora, was a dancer. Isadora
Duncan and Mary Dempsey not only became instant best friends but maintained a
lifelong bond that outlasted their many relationships with men.
Returning to America, in Chicago Desti met her third husband, the wealthy stockbroker Solomon Sturges
(1865-1940), who adopted Preston in 1902.
She managed to exact an agreement to live with her husband only half the year.
The remainder of her time–which often stretched well beyond six months–would
be spent in Europe, accompanying Isadora to Bayreuth and other venues. According to biographers, Solomon Sturges was "diametrically opposite to Mary and her bohemianism". This included her close friendship with Isadora Duncan, as
Desti would sometimes travel from country to country with Duncan's dance company. Mary also carried on a romantic affair with Aleister Crowley and
collaborated with him on his magnum opus Magick. After her divorce from Sturges in May 1911, she
married Vely Bey Denizli (born 1877). She last married Howard Leonard Perch
(1890-1957).
In Paris Desti opened a cosmetics company called Maison d'Este, in 1911.
She had learned a secret Ottoman skin cream formula from her new Turkish
father-in-law, Elias Pasha, physician to the sultan. She designed delicate perfume and
lotion bottles and had them hand blown in Venice. Deciding she was descended
from Italian nobility–on the grounds that Dempsey had to be a mispronunciation
of the princely “d’Este”–Mary Dempsey named her European business Maison
d’Este. After threats of litigation from the actual d’Estes, she modified the
firm’s name to Desti and used it as her middle name. Sturges summed up the
situation by writing: "My mother was in no sense a liar, nor even
intentionally unacquainted with the truth…as she knew it. She was, however,
endowed with such a rich and powerful imagination that anything she had said
three times, she believed ferverently. Often, twice was enough." Mary found a mezzanine floor at 4, rue de la Paix between the Place Vendome and the Opera. She had it decorated by Isadora Duncan's designer friend
Paul Poiret, who had just branched off from dressmaking into interior decorating using the name Atelier Martine, and Mary proclaimed the results "fantastic". Before the business opened, Mary and Vely realized that they were going to need something more to sell than just the skin lotion. One day, a very famous manicurist Mrs. Kantor was invited to the business, a product line for nails called "Kantorshine" was sold by Desti in honor of Mrs. Kantor. Then a hair dresser was added, as well as a couple of Chinese chiropodists, and finally a very fine old chemist. With all the staff in place, the Beauty Institute was ready to serve the public.
At Baccarat and Lalique, some lovely crystal bottles were made for lotions
based on the secret Harem formula, and some alabaster jars were turned out for
creams and unguents from the same source.
A second branch of Maison Desti was opened up, this time in Deauville. In
1914, Mary formed a deal with the owner of Ciro's, a fashionable Parisian
restaurant. The owner had rented a house for the season in the new resort town
of Deauville in Normandy (the millionaire's playground). The deal was that
Maison Desti would occupy the ground floor of Ciro's building, and the
restaurant would continue operations on the first floor. Preston, fifteen and
still at school in Switzerland, was manager of the cosmetics shop, got room
and board as part of the deal. For the next few months, he would be able to
sleep above the restaurant in a cozy flat and take his all meals at the
restaurant. At the start of the first World War, Mary sent him on home to
America, for fear that he might enlist in the military. Armed with a many
perfume bottles and cosmetics as he could carry Preston went directly to 347
Fifth Avenue and along with Daisy Andrews, established the American branch of
Maison Desti. Department stores such as B. Altman, Bonwit Teller, Jordan
Marsh, Best & Co, Mandel Brothers, and Marshall Field's carried the Desti
line.
When WWI broke out in August, Mary went to the front to volunteer as
a medic, citing her non-existent Chicago medical credentials.
Desti became owner of Desti Beauty Products cosmetics firm and also owned a
New York City studio, Desti Emporium (initially managed by Preston Sturges) which sold art objects, perfumes, and clothing.
In 1914, reports from Daisy Andrews at the New York shop did not bode well and
Mary traveled to New York to see for herself. After a heated argument with
Mary, Andrews walked out and a lawyer advised Mary to declare bankruptcy.
Taking his advice, and making a clean sweep of things, the posh Fifth Avenue
shop was closed for good. Apparently, Mary regretted this decision for the
rest of her life. Not to be deterred, the remnants of the Fifth Avenue store
was moved to a smaller but pretty location at 23 East Ninth Street, across the
street from the the Cafe Lafayette, an area known for its French flavor.
Together, they revived the Desti cosmetic line, the Aurore Rouge, and their
face powders with the unusual tints, the Secret of the Harem cream (which was
called simply Youth Cream because of Turkey's alliances during the war).
The orders were still coming in but very slowly. Most of the New York
shop's customers were the big department stores, their stock of Desti products
were beginning to be depleted, and they were asking for replenishment.
Importation was still out of the question, so Mary and Preston had to make due
with American supplies, boxes and bottles, an assortment of essential oils,
fixatives and other raw materials, eau de cologne spirits (alcohol) for
perfume, which they felt were not up to French standards. They bought bottles
from the Whitall-Tatum and Company, unfortunately a far cry from those Mary
got in Venice or from Baccarat and Lalique. For the packaging they bought
attractive boxes from a boxmaker named Mr. Rothchild. The alcohol was not aged
and the raw materials were "not bad but they were not very good". They hired
an elderly part time chemist to work on the perfumes and cosmetics. Some of
Desti's better known customers were Evelyn Nesbitt, Ganna Walska (who had her
own perfume business), Peggy
Guggenheim, Mae Marsh, Lillian Russell and the daughter of cosmetics
queen, Madame CJ Walker.
In 1914, the rue de la Paix store closed. A mob of patriotic Parisians
learned of Mary’s marriage to Vely Bey and stormed her shop when Turkey allied
with Germany. Because of the war, it was nearly impossible to get the Desti
products shipped from France and imported into the USA, the business began to
flounder.
One night in 1915 Preston and Mary were seeing Isadora off
on a ship to Italy when she called from the deck, “Mary! If you don’t come
with me, I don’t know what I’ll do!” Despite having no money and only the
clothes on her back, Mary Dempsey walked up the gangplank, saying to Preston,
“Do the best you can, darling. Keep things going. I’ll send you some money as
soon as I can!”
In 1916, Mary opened a branch of Maison Desti in London at 6, 7 and 8 Old
Bond Street, upstairs over Teofani the tobacconist. One day, Vely Bey showed
up with an idea for paperless cigarettes held together with a leaf of tobacco
and rose petal tips, which seemed a good idea and Mary, a nonsmoker, who
didn't like the taste of tobacco, thought that cigarettes perfumed with amber
might mask the unpleasant taste, devised a scented tobacco called Desti’s
Ambre Cigarettes. She found the results delicious and the cigarettes were very
popular with the ladies. The cigarettes were dedicated to the French revue
artist Alice Delysia. Though she added many new items to the Maison Desti
line, the business was struggling. She summoned Preston to London to help her
pick up the pace.
It was 1916, and Preston turned 18 soon after and decided he no longer
wanted anything to do with Maison Desti. He served as a cadet in the Aviation
Section of the US Signal Corps. The war ended before his training was
completed, and he was disappointed and felt "cheated and unmanly"because he
never saw any combat. He did graduate his Air Service training with honors and
won the wings and the title of officer. With no other options in his immediate
future, he set off for New York and returned to Maison Desti.
While Preston was in the Air Service, Mary moved the store on Ninth Avenue
to 4 West Fifty Seventh Street and turned into a beauty salon bringing in
manicurists and makeup artists to serve the upscale clientele. The head Desti
manicurist, happened to be Peggy Sage. Peggy Sage went on to form her own
successful company selling cosmetics and making millions of dollars with nail
polish and lipsticks. The "perfumed warm atmosphere" did not suit Preston, so
instead of conducting business inside the shop, he decided to sell his
products outside of the shop, going from hairdresser to beauty salon,
promoting his goods. It was in 1920 that he invented his most successful
commercial product, a lipstick which he called Preston's Red Red Rouge, a
kissproof indelible lip color. With Preston back in New York and handling the
business quite well, Mary returned to Paris. One day in 1924, two perfume
distributors from the Lionel Trading Company turned up in Brooklyn, they
offered to buy the enormous amount of $1,000 worth of Desti products a month
in exchange for exclusive distribution rights. Out of jealousy, Mary wanted
the business back in her name and rights only. He dismantled his shop while
his mother looked about for a prettier shop for Maison Desti, her Maison
Desti.
The deal with the Lionel Trading Company came to nothing, and Preston moved
to Chicago near his father. He came back to New York and visited his mother at
her 603 Fifth Avenue apartment and pretty shop where she sold batik scarves
and perfumes and cosmetics. She was tired of New York and wanted to hand over
Maison Desti back to Preston if he could come up with money for her to go on a
trip to Paris.
Mary Desti passed away from leukemia in 1931 at her residence, 603 Fifth
Avenue, of leukemia after being seriously ill for two months. By the time of
Mary's death, Maison Desti came to a close.
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