Estee Lauder: The Queen of Beauty--Women To Admire #4

For Part Four of my "Women to Admire" columns, I've chosen Estee Lauder, her 100th birthday would be July 1, 2008. (No, I didn't know this off the top of my head, research was required*). One item I learned was that her "break out" product, Youth Dew, came out one year before I was born...maybe that's why at some level, the name, Estee Lauder, has resonated through many female-only "no men allowed" conversations.

Estee Lauder is the first I've chosen due to her business success; as such she had few peers. As a salesperson and marketing genius she was a giant upon whose proverbial shoulders many now stand. As a woman determined to create her own company, form the parameters of her own life, create a beauty-empire as her world...she has no equal in the 20th Century. But beyond her larger than life persona are my personal memories of Estee Lauder's products that drift fragrantly across three generations of my family.

Memories of Estee Lauder's products trickle across three generations of my family. They say that a smell or aroma is the best kind of memory for triggering multitudes of associated sights, and sounds, and my memories are filled with Estee Lauder fragrances.

Grandmother memories: My maternal grandmother was no gingham-wearing, pie-baking, chubby-cuddling grandma type. She was tall, not just because I was a child and she was an adult type tall, but Tall. Taller than both her adult children, and taller than her husband, especially since she was almost always in heels. And with those heels, were great clothes. One corner of her bedroom had a sewing machine table, and a dress-form manequin. When we shopped together it was for fabrics and patterns and buttons and trims, not ready-made clothing. She created school clothes for my sister and me, stunning chic dresses and suits for herself, and the fanciest gown of all...the sparkling floor-length spectacle that had been my mother's highschool prom dress. (Which we were allowed to unzip from it's bag and 'ooh' and 'aah' over..just as long as our hands were spotlessly clean.) Sewing, knitting, needlework, fashion were major hobbies, interests, money-savers, for her ... and her skills were amazing.

Back in the 1960s, she and my grandfather moved from a darkish 1920s home and neighborhood to a new neighborhood of long sleek homes. In this house she had a rare treasure...her own bathroom. For all the home's modern sleek newness, my grandmother did up this room as more of a French Boudoir in vanilla-ecru-linen whites, with gold accents. Gold towel rods, faucets, trays for lovely bottles, gold embroidery on towels, moire wallpaper, an upholstered velvety feeling vanity slipper chair, and luscious drapery at the tub hiding the more industrial plastic shower curtain. Although this might sound hideous, it was stunning ... crisp yet plush, 100% feminine, but not a ruffle in sight. Think the cool, sleek blondness of Lauren Bacall or Lana Turner done up as a room.

As a little girl and even as a teen, it was like a little fancy room from a palace or Manhattan penthouse.....and it always smelled like Youth Dew. That little dark bottle's image resides firmly in my brain without having actually seen a bottle of this elixir for decades. Enhancing the aroma were all the additional Youth Dew items....soaps, lotions, etc. My memories of her can't fail to be sprinkled with the deep rich Youth Dew scent.

My grandmother, my mother, and I, all have dry skin, so Youth Dew was perfect. It was very oily, almost like baby oil and was marketed as both a scent and a bath oil. That way it was seen as a practical luxury. This concept is something that Estee Lauder excelled at; her products were always a treat, but amazingly there was always a quality to the product's name, sales pitch, or packaging that made it easier, more practical, less indulgent, for the housewife to plunk down her dollars for an Estee Lauder item.

Youth Dew also found a loyal customer base arriving as it did in the 1950s. I read an article some time back about perfumes and it was relating that the French perfumes, which women around the world had relied on, had difficult times starting back into production after World War II. Perfumes, not truly a necessity, took a backseat as resources were needed elsewhere. White Shoulders and Youth Dew were two of the very first manufactured in the USA and women were eager to buy after the cutbacks of the war and to be loyal to American products in the 'age of Eisenhower.'

For my mother, it was all about the creams and cleansers for skincare, and she trusted Estee Lauder's magical potions to protect her skin even as she used lots of make-up. While my grandmother wore barely any make-up, my mother was a beautiful young woman and very social wife and she and my dad glammed it up throughout the sixties. With role models like Jaqueline Kennedy for my mom and the rat-pack men for my dad...they were a classy looking pair at their frequent social outings. For my dad, Aramis...Estee Lauder's male scent...was non-negotiable. Probably because my mother did all the purchasing of his toiletries. For my mom, like other women of the day, the sixties were all about foundation, eye-liner, eye shadows, false lashes and rouges as women made the transition from Mamie Eisenhower, through Jaqueline Kennedy, and on to icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Faye Dunaway (think how 'mod' Dunaway appeared in the first "Thomas Crown Affair" movie, 1968), and dazzling brunettes like Natalie Wood (below) and Sophia Loren. The 'natural look' was definitely NOT part of the scene!

The Seventies: Now it's my turn to become an Estee Lauder consumer. Luckily for me, the company was changing to suit someone my age. I still remember the model's name....Karen Graham. Graham, Cybill Shepherd, Lauren Hutton and Jean Shrimpton were the models whose photos I tore out of magazines and taped up on my walls. According to Answer.com, Graham was hired in 1971 and was the face of Estee Lauder for 15 years (before re-touching technology invented!). "Graham's identification with Estée Lauder was so successful, many people thought she was Estée Lauder herself," notes the website's information.

For me...the magical moment when I connected with Estee Lauder was the creation of White Linen perfume and products in 1978. I was hooked. And hooked for decades. To me, back then, it was the polar opposite of Youth Dew. It was light, crisp, fresh, young and I received compliments on it forever. In fact, the last compliment I got about my White Linen scent was about two years ago, when a young woman helping me try on shoes said, "Oh, White Linen. My mother always wore that." At that moment I felt about about 100 years old and completely out-of-date. But switching to a new fragrance wouldn't be easy...my husband loves that scent! To him, it IS me!

Fortunately for stockholders, the management at Estee Lauder isn't relying on women my age to make their dividends for them...they've been brilliant at keeping their eye on the continuing generations of 25-40 year old woman. From Elizabeth Hurley's 13 years as "the face" and the 2006 signing of actress Gwyneth Paltrow for the updated "Pure White Linen" and the new "Pleasures" scents, the company wafts along atop huge annual sales figures. According to an article in the May, 2008, Vogue, sales for PWL have doubled since Lauder's granddaughter, Aerin Lauder, signed Paltrow. It would seem that the family members who now run the company are handling it quite well since Lauder's death in 2004.

As another female generation in my family enters young womanhood, (my two daughters), Estee Lauder is not as appealing. One uses products from Bath&BodyWorks, and one is a fan of Coco by Chanel. (According to one article, Lauder's fragrances outsell Chanel's by 3 to one). But both are under age 25, so there's still lots of time for them to make the switch!

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Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize winning author.

* Time.com, to see the article I referenced , click here.

To see Fortune magazine's honors to Estee Lauder's place in the business world, click here.

To check out all the Estee Lauder goodies, I mean products, click here.