Karen Ann Graham (born 1945) is an American model from the 1970s and the 1980s. She was a spokesmodel for the cosmetics company Estee Lauder, Inc.
Her
status as a legendary model was set, however, with the Estee Lauder advertising
campaign. The company began employing her intermittently in 1970 and 1971 to
appear in their print ads. She was employed so frequently that by 1973, she
became Estee Lauder's exclusive spokesmodel.
It was a job she would do for the rest of the decade, appearing in print and television ads that presented her in tasteful, elegant, generously appointed tableaux - a parlor, a drawing room, a veranda - to represent the high-class image the Estee Lauder company created for itself.
In these ads, Graham was never identified by name, which Estee Lauder herself frankly admitted was deliberate. Because the Lauder company aimed its products at upper-income women, at expensive prices, the ads had to project luxury. Various props were used - dolls, horses, and, curiously, a framed photograph of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, in a 1981 ad. The ad campaigns were mainly meant to project traditional, Old World elegance.
Karen Graham inevitably gained attention from many men, including Delbert Coleman, a tycoon who ran the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was known for his controversial financial deals. He married Graham in 1974, but the marriage did not last long. "I didn't so much marry him as he married me," she admitted in a 1999 interview. "You know, sometimes people think that models are the image in the magazines. Certainly [Delbert Coleman] married me thinking I was the woman in the Estee Lauder ads."
Karen Graham quit in 1985, when she turned 40; as she told People magazine in 2000, she decided to leave modeling while she was still on top. "I didn't want to see myself going downhill in the profession," she explained.
In 1999, she returned to modeling for Estee Lauder's "Resilience Lift" face cream, aimed at older women and designed to help female skin reproduce the skin nutrients that prevent wrinkles. Graham was happy to return to modeling for the campaign, which lasted for a few years.
She strongly believes that women should remain active well into middle age. "A lot of women my age," she said at age 53, "underestimate themselves, and I think it's important to get the message out there that we're vital, we're active, we're important, and we're beautiful."
