Success Quote by Elizabeth Arden

A razor-edged one-liner like this works because it flips the expected confession. Elizabeth Arden, a self-made beauty tycoon in a male-dominated economy, frames romance the way she framed product: selection, standards, results. “I pick good women” sounds like the language of hiring and mentorship, a boss asserting discernment. Then she swerves: “but I haven't had any luck with my men.” The punchline is that competence is easy to source; power is not.

The intent is half joke, half verdict. Arden isn’t claiming she can’t spot character. She’s saying the men in her orbit - partners, suitors, executives, society’s gatekeepers - are where the system breaks down. “Luck” is doing a lot of work: it lets her critique men without sounding bitter, and it hints at the larger reality that women, even wealthy ones, were forced to treat marriage and male authority as a kind of gamble. You can curate your staff; you can’t fully curate a world run by men who believe they’re entitled to run you, too.

In context, it reads as a coded power statement from a woman who built an empire by selling femininity while refusing to be subordinate. The line mocks the romantic myth that the “right man” is the ultimate prize. Her real allegiance is to women as the reliable infrastructure of success - workers, clients, allies. Men, in Arden’s formulation, are the variable: charming, influential, unpredictable, and too often not up to the standard women are expected to meet every day.