Marilyn Miglin was a model turned cosmetics entrepreneur well-known for her Oak Street salon and regular appearances on the Home Shopping Network.
“She was really smart, and she really figured out where the market was,” said Chicago lawyer Lloyd Shefsky, a longtime business adviser. “She did it all, too — not just the fragrances, but the packaging, the branding, the labeling.”
Miglin, 83, died of complications from a stroke March 14 at her Gold Coast home, said her son, Duke.
Born Marilyn Klecka in Chicago, Miglin grew up on the Northwest Side and graduated from Schurz High School. While in school she danced professionally, both in ballet and musical comedy shows.
She recalled in a 1983 Tribune article that dancing meant “working from early morning until late at night, until my feet swelled, but I couldn’t say ‘I can’t do it,’ or ‘I’m tired,’ no matter what.”
Miglin attended Northwestern University on a math scholarship and continued dancing, participating in the chorus at the famous Chez Paree nightclub. After college, she toured for two years with Jimmy Durante’s troupe.
Back in Chicago, Miglin modeled for Marshall Field & Co. for a time. In 1959, she married Lee Miglin three months after they were introduced. On a trip with him to New York City, she learned that dancers had difficulty finding good makeup in Chicago. So in 1963 she opened a cosmetics store on Oak Street.
Miglin eventually worked with a cosmetics chemist, George Fiedler, to develop her own line of cosmetics. In 1979, she rolled out her own fragrance, Pheromone, after years of research. She began selling Pheromone and other cosmetics in department stores nationwide.
“She was just an extraordinary woman,” said socialite, author and public relations guru Donna “Sugar” Rautbord. “Pheromone became an immediate hit, and it went into Saks and Field’s, which is unheard of. People couldn’t believe that somebody could stay in Chicago and from their little laboratory and place on Oak Street be in competition with all the big (cosmetics companies).”
In the late 1990s, Miglin began appearing as a pitchwoman on the Home Shopping Network for her line of skin-care products, cosmetics and fragrances.
“Just because she had something like a store on Oak Street didn’t mean she needed to stay there,” her son said. “She was open to moving to an online presence, and that was part of her being on the Home Shopping Network. The dynamic of makeup did change over the years, and she had to keep up with it.”.
Rautbord credited Miglin for viewing her business as a way to give women added confidence.
“She believed the beauty business was another way, another approach to women’s empowerment,” Rautbord said. “If nothing more, it gave them the courage and the self-respect to go out and do as they wanted to do in life.”
To that end, Miglin began working with the University of Illinois Hospital Craniofacial Center. She became involved with the group after meeting Michele McBride, one of the survivors of the devastating 1958 Our Lady of Angels School fire in Humboldt Park, which claimed the lives of 92 children and three nuns. McBride, who died in 2001, suffered burns on 70% of her body.
McBride’s sister, Delourdes “Dae” Hannah, noted that McBride was seeking makeup to cover scars from burns, and the large cosmetics firms offered no choices. Eventually, Miglin and McBride connected, and they worked together on trying to help burn victims find makeup options.
“They both did a lot of good in helping (burn victims), who needed to … learn how to apply makeup, and it changed their lives,” Hannah said.
Shefsky recalled that Miglin’s personal style sometimes belied her intelligence.
“She wasn’t one of those people who acted like she was the smartest person in the room, even though many times she was,” he said. “But you’d sit in a meeting and she wouldn’t say anything for 10 minutes, which is an eternity, but at the end of the 10 minutes, she’d encapsulate what everyone else had said, and she was now already running in a new direction with it.”
Miglin, who authored a motivational book in 2002, “Best Face Forward,” never retired.
Miglin was a tireless champion of Oak Street as a high-end shopping destination, and she founded and led the Oak Street Council. She eventually was honored with Oak Street being given the honorary street name of “Marilyn Miglin Way.”
Miglin was a longtime fixture on Chicago’s social scene, as well as a donor and fundraiser for numerous institutions, including the Ogden School and the Anti-Cruelty Society.
Lee Miglin was slain in their home in 1997 by Andrew Cunanan, who two months later killed fashion designer Gianni Versace. Miglin was portrayed by actress Judith Light in a 2018 televised dramatization of Cunanan’s multistate killing spree, which claimed five victims.
Miglin married business consultant Naguib Mankarious in 1999. He died in 2000.
In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Marlena; and six grandchildren.
There were no services.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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