Carita

French brand of products for face, body, and hair care. It was 1929 when Maria and Rosy Carita, aged 18 and 16, began to work as hairdressers in the space of a former butcher’s shop in Toulouse. The small salon became immediately well-known in the area: during World War II and the German occupation of Paris, it was visited by the most elegant women of Paris who took shelter in the free zone. In 1943 the two sisters decided to move to Paris. At the first they worked as apprentices at Gervais, the most famous hairdresser of the time, until they were able to open their own salon. In 1947 they purchased a space at Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré 5. Within three years they were already employing 50 people and producing their first cosmetics. But success forced them to move again. In 1951 they opened at n.ú 11 on the same street (today the headquarters of the Carita Center for Total Beauty), beginning a decade-long collaboration with the coiffeur Alexandre, and later opening a beauty institute where they set up the first complete line of Carita products (face, body, and hair treatments, make-up, and sun products). Towards the end of the 1950s, they attained international fame thanks to the first pineapple-shaped wigs created for the 1958 Spring Collection of Givenchy. The hair styles of the most prominent women in the world at that time were designed by Carita: from the chignon of Maria Callas to the haircut Juliette Gréco, and from the ponytail of Brigitte Bardot to the platinum blond hair of Catherine Deneuve. After the death of the sisters, in 1986 the brand was acquired by Shiseido, which relaunched and modernized the products, focusing on their curative effect.