NEW YORK — Estée Lauder was one of the most colorful and quotable individuals in the history of the cosmetics industry. Through the years, she often shared her insights as well as opinions with WWD. Here, some highlights.
“What would you rather get from an admirer, a bottle of Beautiful or a bottle of Poison?” Lauder once asked a luncheon crowd during launch activities for the Beautiful fragrance. Taking a swipe at a strong-scented competitor from Christian Dior, she added, “Beautiful doesn’t precede you into a room. It stays with you.”
— 1985
“I think it’s terrible,” she said. acknowledging other new entries at the time, such as Obsession and Poison, but not naming any competitors herself. “They try to reach customers by shocking them.”
— 1985
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“Everybody’s been waiting for my memoirs,” she said with satisfaction, “the story of how I had to compete with Arden, Monteil, Dorothy Gray, Rubinstein. They all discouraged me. It was very hard being a woman when I had to visit some of the stores or the buying offices, I was the only woman waiting to be seen. I cried a lot, too; I didn’t get there with a smile. People discouraged me. But if you want to be successful, you’ve got to stick with it.”
— 1984
When working on her book, “Estée: A Success Story,” Lauder dictated into a tape recorder, envisioning the effort as an intimate chat with her saleswoman. “I was talking to my girls, telling them, ‘You can start a business and have furs and nice homes. You can be an Estée Lauder, too.’”
— 1985
“Every place I’d go,” she said during an interview about her autobiography, “I’d be sitting next to a gentleman on my right, a gentleman on my left, and they’d say, ‘How did you do it? How did you compete with all these people?’ I’d say, ‘I did it, not by dreaming about it, but by work.’” She added, “I did it the way I thought was right, and it turned out to be right. No one taught me — usually girls have a father or an uncle to help them. But people said to me, ‘you’ll never get ahead in New York City, you’ll never go any further.’”
— 1984
“Every time [friends] put it on, people would say, ‘That’s beautiful. What is it?’ I told them, ‘I’m going to call it Beautiful.’”
— 1985
Lauder said she made her first appearance in a decade at Saks Fifth Avenue so “people will know I’m still active and working on these things.”
— 1982
About meeting Raisa Gorbachev, Lauder said through a spokeswoman: “It’s going to be a wonderful day for me. She’s someone I’ve always wanted to meet.” After their 45-minute meeting, Lauder said, “Those Russian women are really chic.” Lauder admired Gorbachev’s purple leather coat but encouraged her to remove it for the crowds because she “looked so pretty” in her chalk-striped navy suit.
— 1988
“Gee whiz, I’ve got to call my son Leonard and find out if he bought Giorgio,” Lauder said of rumors about an acquisition of Giorgio fragrances. “He has the right to do anything, he is the chairman of the board,” she added.
— 1986
“They’re easy, simple and elegant,” Lauder said of advertisements for White Linen. “They don’t say ‘sexy.’”
— 1982
“It sparkles just like crystal,” Lauder said of her fragrance Knowing. “When a woman wears it, she feels like she knows it all.” She added: “It’s a fragrance for the 21st century. It’s different, unlike all those florals.”
— 1988
“I pass my factory and I say, ‘I can’t believe I see my name in lights,’ I haven’t changed that way. Every day means an awful lot to me. It’s not easy,” she said forcefully. “I want you to know it’s not easy. If you think it’s easy, you’re wrong. I don’t feel I’m successful. I always worry. Anybody who doesn’t worry, it’s all over. It’s one thing becoming successful, but it’s hard to stay that way. Who helped me? I helped myself. I know how to pack, how to ship, how to make the products. I have done every job in the company.”
— 1984
“I am not young. I am old,” she said in 1985, when an unauthorized biography by Lee Israel, called “Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic,” said that she was 77 at the time. “I feel very young at heart. People sometimes say to me, ‘Your husband is here,’ and they are referring to [son] Leonard.” Lauder said she wouldn’t reveal her age. “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she said, adding that she had held out so long it had become a game. “No one can write my book,” Lauder said of the Israel book. “How does anyone know how I started? It doesn’t affect me one bit. If she feels she wants to make money off me, let her try.”
— 1985
“You are only happy when you do what you want to do,” she remarked about why she wouldn’t pressure her son Ronald to leave politics for beauty.
— 1987
“These women are all good friends, real people — I like that word ‘real,’” Lauder said of her annual holiday luncheon guests in 1983. “Good friends,” according to Lauder, are those whose “who call to ask you how you are, who call me in Europe, who don’t want to be invited but who want to see what they can do for you. But at this moment, all I want is good health for myself and my children.”
— 1983
“I felt that the body needs as much care as the face does. And when a woman uses fragrance, she wants to embellish herself with it,” Lauder explained. “American women are not as conscious as European women are about the care of their bodies,” Lauder said. “In Europe they buy a cream for their bodies when they buy a cream for their faces. Here, you have to sell it to them. And European women are used to keeping their hands soft, because men often kiss their hands.”
— 1980
“White Linen was supposed to be alone,” she said. “It’s a new fragrance from head to toe. The name White Linen was my idea, to have women visualize crispness. It’s growing by leaps and bounds.” She added, “I don’t want to try and ram it down their throat. I’m not looking for the extra fourth sale. I’m looking for the long-run sale.”
— 1980
“I pass my factory and I say, ‘I can’t believe I see my name in lights,’ I haven’t changed that way. Every day means an awful lot to me. It’s not easy.”
— 1984