To The Glamour Born
HEIRESS TO A FAMILY FORTUNE WORTH US$17.9B, AERIN LAUDER HAS EXPANDED HER BUSINESS AND CREATIVE PURSUITS WITH A HOMEWARE LINE THAT REFLECTS HER CHIC, RELAXED AESTHETIC
Aerin Lauder’s New York apartment celebrates her family’s legacy while embodying her inimitable sense of style
Aerin Lauder is a woman with the weight of history in her name. The granddaughter of the indomitable Estée Lauder, she has built a career shaped by her family’s past, but also quite separate from it. While the Estée Lauder name is indelibly associated with beauty products, Aerin Lauder has moved away from an exclusive focus on fragrances and cosmetics and turned her brand of effortless style to the world of interiors. After a glossy New York childhood and an adolescence spent partly in Vienna (the city her family migrated from in the 1930s), Aerin Lauder has developed a unique aesthetic that captures the imagination of people the world over. Part New York cool, part European decadence, and with a hint of unfussy Hamptons chic thrown in the mix, it has an instantly recognisable style. “I’ve always been drawn to looks that are classic and understated with a modern touch,” says Lauder. “My interiors reflect that and so do my own designs. My taste is largely influenced by many different cultures and mixing many different elements of my life, from New York to Vienna. In Austria, there’s an amazing sense of style and tradition, and I love using touches of red and gold for the holidays—like placing berry branches and dahlias throughout the house and wrapping garlands around fireplace mantles.”
INHERITED STYLE
With a grandmother who single-handedly reshaped American attitudes towards beauty, it would have been impossible for her not to exert an influence. “Estée was an amazing grandmother and friend,” says Lauder. “We never called her Grandma, always Estée. She was an incredible role model who taught me the importance of passion, style, hard work, family, and all things beautiful. She loved to decorate—i inherited much of my design aesthetic from her. And her home was beautiful. The hallway to her bedroom had hand-painted Chinese paper on the walls, which was my inspiration for the Aerin Beaujeu wallpaper. She had lush carpets and there were always fresh flowers on her dressing table.”
GOLD STANDARD
Many of these design ideas were revolutionary at the time—and none more so than her obsession with gold. Too much gold was once considered garish in American society, but Estée Lauder was determined to incorporate the metal into not only her wardrobe, but also her house and her cosmetics, which are known for their gleaming lids. “Estée always taught me that gold is the ultimate neutral,” says Lauder. “From a very young age, I loved her gold jewellery. She had incredible gold wallpaper in her home in New York that I will never forget. I have gold touches throughout my apartment and when we started to develop the Aerin home collections, we incorporated gold as a brand staple. And that has continued to be a signature throughout each new collection launch, across all brand categories.” LEFT TO RIGHT Large blooms and foliage infuse character into every room—from the hallway to the living area to the dining room; gold touches feature largely in Aerin Lauder’s home and the Aerin Home collections, reflecting her grandmother’s belief that gold was the ultimate neutral Lauder may chair the Met Ball, live on Park Avenue and spend her weekends in the Hamptons—three prime indicators of New York royalty—but she remains remarkably grounded. She walks to her offices on Madison Avenue (where she still oversees style direction for Estée Lauder while running Aerin) and makes dinner for her two sons every evening. Her greatest indulgence, meanwhile, is one that’s recognisable to women everywhere: sinking into her old-fashioned claw-footed bath in her pink-walled bathroom.
EFFORTLESS LUXURY
Lauder has a very relaxed approach to interior design, turning her back on anything too formal that will create an overly prescribed atmosphere. “I personally prefer an effortless approach to my interiors—and even in my fashion and make-up choices,” she says. “Editing is very important to me and makes my life easier. That was my approach to starting the Aerin brand—getting rid of the excess. That, and good lighting. Lighting brings warmth and life into a room, and can animate and transform even the smallest of spaces. It’s important to me that my home is liveable. With two boys and my dogs, I made sure that no room was off-limits when I was working on the design.”
VINTAGE INSPIRATION
For Lauder, the real thrill of having her own homeware brand is the ability to build entire collections around products she has unearthed during a lifetime of pottering around antiques stores and rummaging through her grandmother’s attic. “My favourite possession is an antique chandelier from an Austrian cafe that I found at a little store in the Hamptons when I was in my early 20s,” she says. “I’ve loved the piece for years and always wished that I had a pair. It served as the inspiration for the Renwick crystal chandelier in my Aerin lighting collection. I love being able to translate my memories into pieces that others can treasure as well. There’s also a 1930s chandelier in my library in New York. It’s a beautiful sphere of clear, pink and purple glass, and is a total statement piece that I found at an antiques shop on the Left Bank in Paris that influenced the Heather chandelier, also in my Aerin lighting line.” The fact that her interiors brand has captured the imaginations of people the world over illustrates just how much of Estée Lauder—the woman who brought accessible, affordable and relatable concepts of luxury into millions of homes—lives on in Aerin Lauder today.