Magna cum Lauder

Aerin Lauder, Estee Lauder Private Collection. Photo / Supplied

Aerin Lauder's New York office is an elegant white space with a killer view of Central Park, 39 storeys below. But what one first notices upon crossing its threshold is an enormous photograph hanging behind the desk. So large that it covers most of the wall, the picture depicts a perfectly coiffed lady of a certain age, her face partially shrouded in shadow, gazing down like a goddess upon all who enter.

"That's my grandmother," explains Lauder. "Isn't it so amazing? I always look at it and think, 'It's so beautiful! It's so perfect, with that pearl necklace and those perfect lips'."

A wall-sized photo of one's grandmother is not typical office decor for an executive at a multinational corporation. But, then again, hers was not a typical granny. Estee Lauder, the daughter of Hungarian and Czech immigrants, was living in the working-class borough of Queens when, in 1946, she began mixing face creams in her kitchen and selling them to local salons. Six decades later the cosmetics business that bears her name is worth more than US$7.9 billion ($12 billion) and encompasses 29 beauty labels including Jo Malone, M.A.C, Creme de la Mer, Origins and Clinique.

Though she died in 2004, aged 97, Estee's presence continues to loom large at the company she founded, particularly where Aerin is concerned. Officially, the pretty, copper-haired 39-year-old serves as the senior vice-president and global creative director of the Estee Lauder brand, overseeing, she explains, "everything that the customer looks at, from the stools at the cosmetics counter to the product packaging to the ads". Unofficially, however, she also shoulders the arguably weightier responsibility of stepping into her grandmother's role as the living, breathing embodiment of the brand. Estee Lauder, you see, was perhaps the first to recognise that women buy cosmetics as much for the lifestyle they suggest as for the beauty benefits they promise. And because hers was the ultimate haute lifestyle - with lavish homes around the globe and wardrobes crammed with couture - she herself was a powerful marketing tool.

Today Aerin is the woman whose glamour is the aspiration. And just as Estee would dole out makeup tips in interviews and make regular appearances at department stores, so Aerin sits for magazine photo-shoots and maintains an impeccably dressed presence on the New York social scene.

At 29 she became the youngest person to co-chair the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala, widely regarded as the Park Avenue set's party of the year. She's even appeared in Estee Lauder's fragrance ads, a privilege generally reserved for celebrities such as Elizabeth Hurley and Gwyneth Paltrow. Watching Lauder, as she sits behind her desk expounding on her latest project, a new Estee Lauder counter in Selfridges, London, which has just opened, it's not hard to see why she's been cast as the company's glamour-girl-in-chief. (Her sister, Jane, also works in the business as the senior vice-president and general manager of Origins, but maintains a much lower public profile.)

Her looks, of course, have something to do with it. Dressed in a black tunic layered over a black turtleneck and tights, her hair lightly tousled and her skin sun-kissed (even in the depths of a dreary New York winter), she radiates a clear-eyed, well-bred, all-American sparkle. But Lauder is also impeccably well-mannered and almost superhumanly poised. Even as a teenager, she insists, she never really stepped out of line. "I once put a little streak of bleach in my hair because my friends were all bleaching their hair one summer at the beach," she says with a giggle. "But then I went to the salon and had it fixed. That was the extent of my craziness."

While always polished, Lauder doesn't come across as insincere. She seems to get a genuine rush from thinking about eyeshadow. "I've always been interested in cosmetics," she says.

"I can still remember the first Estee Lauder product I had: Opal lip-gloss. I must have been 13 and all of my friends were in the bathroom at school trying it on. To this day I love floating around a department-store beauty floor."

Lauder's home in the Hamptons - a columned, Greek-revival-style mansion that she inherited from her grandmother - adheres closely to the Estee aesthetic.

"When she left it to us I decided I wasn't going to change much," says Lauder. "We added on because we needed more space but the part that she had decorated we really left as it was, with the gold mirrors and the blue and white Chinese urns on the mantelpiece. It's unexpected, maybe, for a young family, but I think it's fabulous.'

That family includes Lauder's husband, Eric Zinterhofer, a handsome hedge-fund manager whom she met at university and married in 1996, and their two young sons, Will and Jack. Being a mother to boys has been challenging for a self-confessed "ultimate girly girl".

"I always thought I'd have a girl and then I had these two boys and they're such boys," she says with a laugh. "They play basketball and throw the football in the hallways. The whole ceiling of my hall is completely scuffed. It makes me so depressed! When people come over I'm thinking, 'I hope nobody looks up!"'

Though Lauder loves being home at night and says that her "favourite thing in the world is a weekend with no plans", don't expect to see her walking away from the boardroom to pursue life as a full-time mother.

"I love dropping my kids off at school every day and then coming to work. It's really exciting and invigorating for me," she says.

"I was very lucky because Estee gave me great advice. When I was growing up she always used to say, 'whatever you do, do it well, and in order to do that, you have to love what you do.' That was such an important thing, because now I see so many people who've never really thought about what they actually like to do."

Lauder grew up in New York with stints in Washington DC and Vienna - her father served as the ambassador to Austria during the Reagan administration.

She studied visual communications at the University of Pennsylvania and, on graduating, joined the family business. Her first job was in the marketing department of the Prescriptives brand. She later moved over to the Estee Lauder label, working in product development, and went on to serve as the head of advertising before taking on the top creative job in 2004.

While a non-Lauder - the current president Fabrizio Freda - will take over as the chief executive in July, the company remains in many ways a family affair.

In addition to Aerin and Jane there's first cousin William Lauder, the current chief executive, his father, Leonard Lauder, the chairman, and Leonard's wife, Evelyn, the senior corporate vice-president.

At the end of the day, though, for Aerin at least, there is one opinion that still matters the most. Whether Estee would approve of the brand today is a question she's always asking herself.

And the answer to that question? "Yes," she says, without hesitation, glancing up at her grandmother's portrait. "I think she'd be very happy."

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Aerin Lauder is sharing a family secret and continuing a tradition with the launch of Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia. The granddaughter of firm founder Estee Lauder and a senior vice-president of the company, Aerin is fronting the new collection because it's intensely personal and was inspired by the art her grandmother collected and their shared love of white floral fragrances. The Estee Lauder Private Collection concept started back in 1973, when Estee began marketing her favourite scent. Now Aerin has launched a mini-range based on a true-to-nature scent she too developed initially just for herself. "It's my tribute to her." The parfum spray has a cap encrusted in semi-precious gems, echoing a favourite brooch, and is on sale at Estee Lauder counters nationwide.

- INDEPENDENT