Contact Karen at Lord and Taylor 617 262 6000, x244

– by Jon Cotton

Once a rail yard for the Boston and Albany Railroad, the Prudential Center is now a prominent mark on the Boston skyline and a buzzing hub of luxury stores, hotels, a spectacular observatory, and elegant glass architecture.  Many of the guests on our tours stay at the hotels there.  Opening in 1965, the Prudential Tower was once the tallest building in Boston.  As tour guides we either drive by it or see it in the distance during our tours, and many of us mention it or describe it, but how many of us know anything concrete about the culture that works and flows through it?  Well, here is a sample of the mind of one insider.

Women willing to spend on good facial skin care visit Karen Lurie at her Clarins counter at Lord and Taylor, the highest-earning Lord and Taylor Clarins counter in the US after the ones in New York and New Jersey.  “At my price point they’re there because they know on some level that there is credibility to these creams and they’re willing to shell out the money for it,” she said.  “I don’t have roller derby women rolling up to my counter buying a hundred-dollar serum when they can go to Maybelline and buy a foundation for 5 bucks at CVS.”

Surrounded by high-end, world class (expensive) brands like Gucci, Prada, and Tiffany’s, Karen compares herself to Carrie Bradshaw, lead character of HBO production Sex and the City, in her desire to provide blunt, no-nonsense advice to women of Boston about skin care, as Carrie does in the show to women of New York about sex and dating.  Her bottom-line advice to women about facial skin care is “Fix it, don’t cover it up!”  Another point she makes is that Boston women tend to – and should not – spurn colors.

“My clients,” Karen says, “are affluent, educated, polite, and conservative – and often as pale as the early American paintings in the MFA!”  They are “afraid of color,” she says, and can have “washed out faces.”  “They have no color, no inspiration, no pop,” she says, “just safe, boring colors.  Business as usual!  They think bright colors are trashy, cheap, unkempt.  They want to be taken seriously.  Someone wants a lipstick.  I show various colors.  Anything that’s not very pale or safe or conservative is considered not appropriate.”

The most important thing in face care, Karen explains, is the basic health of the skin.  Boston women often cover their face with foundation, she says, rather than seek cures for the skin problems they are covering up.  “I’m not philosophically opposed to foundation now and then,” she says, “but not as a mask.  One’s real face must be involved in the presentation.”  The colloquial phrase “to put my face on,” she says, is too close to the truth.  “You have one face; good skincare regimen with top rated research and plant extracts is an investment,” she says.  Her Clarins products seek to nurture the skin to a healthy, youthful condition.

“Boston women,” she says, “are often less aware than other cultures of the importance of skin care.”  But some women, often asian students, “will seek out the best there is.”  “I put out a product and say ‘This is the best.  It does this, this, this and that.  It costs 82 dollars,’ and people take it.”  With reference to foundation, Karen says, she will sometimes tease saleswomen at neighboring counters (which sell Estee Lauder, Landcome, Chanel, Clinique, Shiseido, and other brands) by pointing to their foundation products and saying “Look at all this brown goop!”

As a representative of the luxury Clarins skincare line at Lord and Taylor in The Prudential Center, Karen Lurie offers free facial demonstrations and advice on skin care.  She manages the third largest-producing clarins counter in the L&T chain.  Lord and Taylor Boston is at 760 Boylston Street.  Call Karen for a free skin time session at 617 262 6000, extension 244.