Pre-Pub Exclusive Event: The House of Beauty Reading with Arabelle Sicardi

Please join us for this exclusive pre-publication event with selected readings and smellings from the book, as well as the opportunity to purchase your own copy of The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry.

Registration required via Eventbrite.

Join us as we celebrate Arabelle Sicardi’s blazingly original collection of essays. A former beauty editor, Arabelle has devoted their entire adult life to the subject of beauty—they have analyzed it, criticized it, praised it, benefited from it, loathed it. Now, in The House of Beauty, they get to the contradictions at the heart of it: beauty and horror, two sides of the same coin.

With their signature blend of intellectual rigor and poetic sensibility, Arabelle explores how beauty myths are crafted, sold, and weaponized, from corporate boardrooms to your local nail salon. Follow alongside Arabelle as they trace the global trail of the shimmering mica in your beauty products, choose-your-own-adventure-style, or journey into the past to unearth the sinister connection between fragrance and fascism. Bear witness as they visit a tech convention focused on the next horrifying frontier of body modification, or as they ask what’s at stake in the braids we weave in our hair. Sharp yet tender in their observations, Arabelle challenges readers to reconsider beauty as more than a product of consumption, inviting a vision of beauty rooted in community and self-care, one that transcends industry-driven ideals.

Equal parts exposé and cultural reckoning, The House of Beauty cracks open an industry that sells dreams and wields power.

Join author and former beauty editor Arabelle Sicardi for a reading from their book, The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry, in person at the Institute for Art and Olfaction. This is an exclusive pre-publication event with early access to purchase the book and meet the author.

Registration required through Eventbrite.

Reading
Thursday, October 9. 7pm - 9pm
at The Institute for Art and Olfaction
932 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA. 90012

About The Book

Learn more: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393531626

About the Author

Arabelle Sicardi is a Taiwanese American writer exploring beauty, care, and crisis. They’ve written for Allure, Teen Vogue, and the Cut; run the scent collective Perfumed Pages; and founded the Museum of Nails Foundation. They split their time between Los Angeles, California, and New York City.

About The Location

We are located in Los Angeles’ historic Chinatown neighborhood, on a pedestrian street that also hosts galleries, souvenir shops, production companies, design studios, and two very cool parrots. The IAO is wheelchair accessible.

Chung King Road is a pedestrian-only road that runs parallel to Hill Street, between Hill St and Yale St. See more information here: http://artandolfaction.com/visit

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