Social Meeting

Aerin Lauder and Johanna Ortiz’s makeup collaboration started as many modern-day partnerships do: on Instagram.

“I was in Palm Beach about two years ago for Christmas and I was wearing this beautiful red dress and I posted [it on Instagram],” said Lauder. “Everyone in my office was like, you have to tag, you have to credit, and I did and [Ortiz] commented and from there it started.”

On Wednesday evening,

Lauder cohosted a dinner party with Net-a-porter and Ortiz at her Upper East Side apartment to celebrate Aerin x Johanna Ortiz, which launched Nov. 2. The party was attended by Brett Heyman, influencer Arielle Charnas,

Indre Rockefeller, Clemence von Mueffling and Net-a-porter’s global buying director Elizabeth von der Goltz.

“Any time we do a beauty collaboration with a fashion designer, it always sells super well,” said Von der Goltz. “It’s a lot to do with the fact that people love beauty. The packaging, getting those special prints that are specific to a designer and having that mashed with beauty and the color, it gives the customer another reason to buy. They’re pretty easy purchases in terms of you’re letting someone enter into the life of Aerin Lauder and the life of Johanna

Ortiz at a more entry price point. You’re giving them that access.”

Asked for their thoughts on why their brands work so well together, Lauder and Ortiz pointed to the fact that they are both female founders.

“The consumer’s very similar,” said Lauder. “Our brand is very much based on beauty, feminine heritage storytelling. I always say, ‘It’s my name on it, it has to be the best it can possibly be,’ and the same goes for Johanna. Tonight, she was helping me adjust my dress, she wanted it to be perfect. It’s very similar, our sensibility and our vision and our taste. It was very synchronized.”

“It felt so free and easy that I think that’s how it has worked,” said Ortiz. “When things go when they feel easy and right, that happened. It was great.”

— ALEXA TIETJEN