SMALL PLEASURES Hannah Betts on the life-enhancing properties of Estée Lauder’s limited-edition compacts
The irresistible allure of Estée Lauder’s festive compacts
he older I grow, the more I am struck by the unseasonal thought that I do not desire a single Christmas gift. The great commercial onslaught diminishes the thrill, our lives are too full of things, and last year I was simply too sad. My mother had died six months earlier, my father was ailing and there felt like nothing to celebrate. And, then, I saw it: an enamel and Swarovski-crystal-bedecked golden-pineapple compact, fashioned by Estée Lauder.
On spotting this wonder in the pages of Bazaar, I experienced all the symptoms of love at first sight: my pulse quickened, my cheeks flushed, and I could not stop smiling. I went to sleep thinking about it, and woke with it on my mind. I told a benevolent friend who later presented me with it, and I will never forget her kindness. This coruscating, sevencentimetre charm reduced – and continues to reduce – me to tears: a small and perfectly formed beacon in that
most difficult of years.
I have always been a nose powderer, and fail to understand how others dispense with this gesture. Blotting apart, there is such Mitfordian elegance in the ritual of attending to one’s complexion with a minuscule work of art, or daubing one’s wrists with solid scent; a practical glamour with particular appeal to no-nonsense British women. In times of trial, we apply our war paint – powder and swipe – and dab on perfume, of course.
My first Lauder compact – the classic gold-alligator pattern – was given to me by my beloved Oxford supervisor and his glamorous wife back in my early twenties. I felt as if I were partaking in a female rite of passage, and cherished it all
They are an amulet to mark another year of love and loss, and propel me ever onward
the more following his painfully premature death.
Flush after acquiring my first non-academic job, I presented compacts to my grandmother – a Wedgwood-style cameo, an art deco greenfly and a lavish dancing girl – all engraved with ‘2003’ (a bumper crop). When she died, they became mine, a twinkling relic of our relationship. This summer, I lost my father, a year after my mother and in equally lacerating circumstances. The next morning I painted my face, perfumed my throat and went onto eBay to begin bidding for little Lauder fetishes to augment my collection. They arrived over the next few weeks, miniature bundles of joy: a quilted number, bound book, golden portrait, prosperity coin, oval sunburst and mother-of-pearl watch fob. They sit where I can see them: totems of recovery. This Christmas, I am torn between seahorses, a star and a glittering globe as an amulet to mark another year of love and loss, and propel me ever onward.
Lauder has been producing compacts since 1956, limited ‘holiday’ editions since 1967: more than 1,700 one-off designs to hold perfume or powder, from 1965’s mother-of-pearl watch fob to last year’s precious pineapple. Every Yule yields a new selection, be it unique pieces or
variations on a theme (cameos are a favourite). The collection is archived at the company headquarters in New York, from where highlights are taken on tour. Harrods – the British store with exclusive rights to sell the compacts – played host in 2010.
It was Estée Lauder herself who inaugurated the brand’s Christmas-compact tradition, and there could not be a more fitting symbol of her devotion to female pleasure. She designed many of the first ornaments, inspired by a shell she found on a beach near her Florida home, or an 18thcentury Battersea box she unearthed in an antique shop. One of her greatest joys was to present guests with these bijoux at gatherings.
For they harbour a special status as a token shared between women. The burlesque performer Dita Von Teese is a Lauder collector and giver; Kate Moss has been known to scour Grays Antique Market for vintage examples of the art to present to friends including Stella McCartney. The affinity between compacts and Christmas feels no less self-evident, given their bauble-like appeal.
In a compact, our emotional investment in beauty takes solid form – part tool, part jewel, part talisman with which we face the world. And, in our age of Snapchat impermanence, women are again falling in love with the idea of giving and receiving a collector’s item to be treasured for ever.