Media Kit

Headshots

Photo Credit: Erin Leydon

Book Campaign Photos

Photo Credit: Henny Photography

Official Bio

Louise Claire Johnson is a Toronto-based writer and the author of BEHIND THE RED DOOR. Her work has appeared in The Globe & Mail, The Huffington Post, Darling Magazine, and more. Featured by Notable as a “Young Professional to Watch,” she is a graduate of The Richard Ivey School of Business and Harvard University. Louise has studied and worked in Hong Kong, Switzerland, New York, and Boston.

As host of The Word Weaver Podcast, where she interviews authors and shares writing advice, her literary lifestyle has garnered a loyal social media following, numerous hosting and speaking events, as well as brand campaigns with Chapters Indigo, HarperCollins, The Toronto Public Library, Hoopla Digital, Rakuten Kobo, BDO, CIBC, The University of Toronto, and the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA).

After six years as a marketing manager at Elizabeth Arden in Switzerland and New York, where she cultivated 360-degree cosmetic, skincare, and fragrance campaigns, Louise took a left-turn in her career to follow her dream of becoming a writer.

She’s a curious creature with an old soul who sends snail mail, collects typewriters, drinks too much coffee, and delights in slow mornings. Writing has always been her constant in an inconstant world, and eventually, it became a calling that couldn’t be ignored.

BEHIND THE RED DOOR is her first book.

Book Cover

Synopsis

“Spring 2021’s most compulsively readable biography-meets-memoir tells the story of two women, a century apart, discovering themselves and redefining beauty and success on their own terms.”

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In 1908, Florence Nightingale Graham moved from the suburbs of Toronto, Canada to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a self-made woman. Within two years, she opened her first beauty salon on Fifth Avenue. Adopting the same name as her company, Elizabeth Arden went on to pioneer the global beauty industry (valued at $532 billion today). At a time when women didn't have the right to vote, Elizabeth became one of the wealthiest self-made women in the world and the first businesswoman to grace the cover of Time magazine. By the end of the 1930s, it was said "there are only three American names known in every single corner of the globe: Singer Sewing, Coca Cola, and Elizabeth Arden."

One hundred years later, in 2008, at the age of eighteen, Louise Johnson moved from the suburbs of Toronto, Canada to Manhattan to begin her dream internship at the cosmetic giant, Elizabeth Arden. She knew nothing about the beauty industry, but was fascinated by the woman behind the brand whose inspiring legacy was at risk of falling through the cracks of history.

Although they lived a century apart, Elizabeth became Louise's invisible guide as she tried her "successful" lifestyle on for size, with a big career in a big city-but behind the glitz and the glamour, they soon struggled to recognize their true selves. Who are we really behind the makeup we put on our faces? Behind the social media highlight reels? Behind the personas we (consciously and subconsciously) present to the world?

This book brings you behind the red doors of Arden, while Louise's story serves to highlight how much (or how little) has changed a century later. What began as a desire to preserve Elizabeth's place in history, evolved into an examination of her coming-of-age in the beauty industry and a cultural excavation on a much larger thread that connects us all.

Ultimately, this book is about identity and how we learn to navigate the world to find our best self, even if it's on a different path than we originally anticipated.

Book Blurb

A must-read for fans of Julie & Julia and The Devil Wears Prada!

Nearly a century before #girlboss culture, Glossier ads, and glammed-up influencers were even glimmers on the horizon, there was Elizabeth Arden — the alter ego of Florence Nightingale Graham, a small-town Canadian girl who pioneered the global beauty industry (valued at $532B today) and became the world’s wealthiest self-made woman.

By the end of the 1930s, it was said “there are only three American names known in every single corner of the globe: Singer Sewing, Coca-Cola, and Elizabeth Arden.” And yet, so few today know her story — which, with the passage of time and the company changing hands in recent years, is under greater threat than ever of being lost to the footnotes of history.

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Now, journalist Louise Claire Johnson embarks on a mission to change that with Behind the Red Door: How Elizabeth Arden’s Legacy Inspired My Coming-of-Age Story in the Beauty Industry. In just under three-hundred compulsively readable pages, Behind the Red Door takes readers on an exhilarating journey alongside two young women from the Toronto suburbs who arrive in Manhattan with big ambitions and bigger work ethics: Elizabeth (“Liz”) Arden and Louise (“Lou”) Johnson, who began an internship at Arden’s NYC headquarters in 2008 and worked her way up to senior global marketing manager before leaving to pursue a degree at Harvard.

A unique blend of biography and memoir, Behind the Red Door is structured chronologically in alternating “Liz” and “Lou” vignettes, following both women as they turn themselves into the success stories they once dreamed of becoming… and discover their true joys, hopes, fears, and inner strength along the way.

In Liz’s timeline — peppered with fascinating facts about the cosmetic industry’s history, scenes of New York City at peak old-world glamour, and bold-faced names including Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe (both fans and friends) — the book charts new territory in revealing the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction story of the first woman to grace the cover of Time magazine, reclaiming Elizabeth’s place as a feminist icon who redefined beauty and paved the way for generations of entrepreneurs, activists and independent women to come.

In 2008, exactly one hundred years after “Liz” moved to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a self-made woman, the author makes the very same journey to begin her dream internship at Elizabeth Arden HQ. The age of social media is just beginning to dawn, the hustle-and-grind lifestyle is de rigueur, and at eighteen years old, “Lou” knows next to nothing about the beauty industry, but finds spiritual kinship with the woman who built it. In a few short years, her lifestyle looks a lot like the Millennial dream, with junior executive positions in Manhattan, Geneva, London… but as she ultimately uncovers in her diary entries addressed to Liz, it doesn’t quite feel like her dream after all.

Equal parts empowering educational biography and potent and relatable memoir, Behind the Red Door is an indispensable playbook for any woman looking to reconnect with her most authentic self and create a successful, fulfilled, beautiful life on her own terms.