In the world of personal care, few companies have reshaped human behavior as profoundly as Gillette. Over a century ago, the company didn’t just sell razors, they engineered a cultural shift. A quiet revolution that turned an untouched market into a multibillion-dollar industry.
In 1915, Gillette introduced the Milady Decolletée, a razor explicitly marketed to women. At the time, female body hair was neither discussed nor considered a problem. Women didn’t shave their legs or underarms, and there was no mass-market demand for it. But Gillette saw something different: an opportunity to redefine femininity.
How the Shift Began
The launch of the Milady Decolletée was accompanied by a strategic advertising blitz. Early 20th-century American magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar and Ladies’ Home Journal, began showing women in sleeveless dresses and swimsuits, attire that would reveal underarm or leg hair, something previously hidden or ignored.
But these images were not simply fashion statements, they were tools of persuasion.
“Gillette’s messaging was clear: to be modern, hygienic, and attractive, a woman must be hairless,” says Rebecca M. Herzig, author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. Herzig’s research reveals that body hair was slowly repositioned in the public imagination, from natural to unacceptable.
Creating the Market, Not Chasing It
By the 1920s and 30s, advertising across America and Europe portrayed body hair as unsightly, even shameful. The shift was accelerated by the flapper movement and Hollywood’s glamorization of smooth skin. The underlying message was no longer about hygiene, it was about identity.
Data from Hope in a Jar by historian Kathy Peiss shows that between 1920 and 1940, the sale of women’s razors and depilatory creams surged across North America. Gillette’s women-specific sales rose significantly in this period, although exact figures from that era remain proprietary.
According to market analysis from Statista, the global women’s grooming market was valued at over $14 billion in 2023, with shaving products contributing a major share. This demand traces its origin not to consumer necessity but to brand-led transformation.
Razor as Cultural Symbol
In less than 25 years, Gillette and its peers had changed social expectations. By the early 1940s, underarm shaving was not just common it was normalized. A 1940 study in the Journal of Marketing noted that more than 80% of American women under 40 shaved regularly. Not because razors had become technically superior, but because culture had been edited.
“They didn’t wait for women to want smooth skin,” notes Aarti Sheth, a brand strategist and partner at Idea Studio, in a widely circulated LinkedIn post. “They made them believe they needed it.”
Lessons for Today’s Brands
This isn’t merely a retrospective on personal grooming; it’s a lesson in branding.
Gillette’s move underscores the power of a brand not just to meet existing demand, but to invent new norms. It is a textbook example of demand creation through narrative control. Rather than selling product features, Gillette sold a new worldview, one that reframed beauty, hygiene, and modernity.
And the legacy holds on. Brands today, in all industries from technology to fashion to food, dream of replicating this strategy. Apple, for example, waited for nobody to desire smartphones without buttons. Tesla didn’t simply sell electric vehicles, they made fossil fuels seem antiquated.
In the era of saturated markets and infinite scrolls, Gillette’s century-old strategy remains a guiding light: If you can change perception, you can own the category.
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