For Evelyn Lauder, the Past Is Certainly No Prologue

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The New York Sun

Evelyn Lauder’s mother, Mimi Hausner, once told her daughter that she could feel her kicking in the womb whenever opera music was played in their household in Vienna. “Much later in life, I would get a great kick out of giving my mother the gift she liked best – tickets to the opera,” the daughter said.


The imagery of an energetic baby in the womb responding to music was to become a metaphor for Evelyn’s life in America, where Mimi and Ernest Hausner came after escaping Nazism and surviving the London blitz and where their daughter won a spot at Hunter College High School and then Hunter College. Perhaps her parents’ harrowing experiences accounted for the fact that Ms. Lauder chose to teach at a Harlem school and motivate disadvantaged students toward success.


She met and married Leonard Lauder not long after starting her teaching career. She joined the family business and went on to formidable accomplishments at the Estee Lauder Companies, where she instituted sales training programs and helped develop innovative color lines and fragrances that have made the company – which has 22,200 employees in dozens of countries and had 2004 revenues of $5.7 billion – the world’s fifth-biggest cosmetics enterprise.


But Evelyn Lauder would lead a life that went dramatically beyond success in business. It would be a life in which her philanthropy and passion would bring breast cancer and women’s health issues to the forefront of public awareness in a campaign that now girds the globe. October has been declared Breast Cancer Month, mostly on account of Ms. Lauder’s efforts. In 1993, she created the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City. The center has since become a much-replicated model for offering coordinated supportive services for one disease under one roof.


And then there are her photographs, enshrined in well-received books and exhibited at prestigious galleries across America, and in London, Paris, Madrid, Beijing, and other cities. In a few weeks, her latest show will be featured at Manhattan’s Pace/MacGill Gallery, which has exhibited such icons as Robert Frank, Irving Penn, and Alfred Stieglitz. Ms. Lauder’s photographs capture nature, landscapes, and head vases from her own extensive collection. She has gifted sales from her pictures – more than $1 million to date – to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which she started 12 years ago and for which she has helped raise $119 million.


“I’ve been very, very lucky in life,” Ms. Lauder, who holds the title of senior corporate vice president of the Estee Lauder Companies, said. The title doesn’t suggest her influence and innovativeness; it’s a bit like saying Laura Bush is a resident of the White House. Ms. Lauder’s husband, Leonard, is chairman, and her older son, William, is president and chief executive officer.


Her life has been played across such a panorama of issues and institutions in contemporary American life that one cannot help but ask Ms. Lauder what animates her.


“Energy, I have lots of energy – and energy breeds energy,” Ms. Lauder said. “My goal has always been to make it better for everybody in the next generation. In the best of Judeo-Christian tradition, I believe that one must leave the world a better place than you found it. That’s ultimately what I’m about.”


Ms. Lauder doesn’t necessarily consider the past as prologue. “For years I had a great weight on my head and shoulders – the weight of a brutal war, the weight of Vienna, the weight of sadness over the genocide of Jews,” she said.


Then she added: “If my life truly began anywhere, it was in America. Even now, I can remember the sight of the Statue of Liberty as our ship came into New York Harbor. It was October. The sun was shining, and the sky was blue. I was far too young then to understand what coming to this country meant for those who escaped tyranny and injustice – but I do now.”


She nearly didn’t make it to America. The Hausners had crossed the Atlantic in a convoy of three ships. The vessel ahead of them hit a German mine and sank. Mrs. Lauder remembers how her parents accommodated rescued survivors in their own tiny cabin.


They made their home on Manhattan’s West Side, and Ms. Lauder’s parents developed a retail clothing business that grew into six stores. Early in life, she understood the importance of meeting the customer’s needs and dealing with an assortment of people. When her father began taking her to the American Museum of Natural History on weekends, she developed a fondness for anthropology, which she majored in at Hunter College. She also had a minor in education.


Leonard Lauder was in the Navy when Evelyn met him. Mr. Lauder’s mother, Estee, had already founded her cosmetics company. She took an immediate liking to Evelyn Hausner. And Ernest Hausner took a similar shine to Leonard Lauder. After their first date, after Mr. Lauder had dropped her at home, the conversation between father and daughter went something like this:


“I just want you to know that he’s a nice boy,” Mr. Hausner said.


The daughter, but 18, interpreted his remark as subtle pressure to get married. She now jokes that Leonard only married her in order to retrieve a copy of a rare book that he’d lent her.


Their marriage developed into a remarkable professional relationship as well. The former schoolteacher decided to start training courses for the Estee Lauder staff. She would frequently stand behind counters at department stores that featured Estee Lauder products and show saleswomen the art of dealing with customers.


She also enhanced the Estee Lauder range by adding many colors and treatment products that appealed to a wider range of complexions and skin types. A color she created – alfresco brick – is still the best-selling lipstick in the brand. She was heavily involved in the creation of the brand’s Clinique line, and also in the introduction of lip gloss in the form of lipstick.


Wasn’t it, well, a bit sticky working with a husband and his famous mother?


“It was actually a great delight,” Ms. Lauder said. “My mother-in-law and I were especially close. She would always say that I was the daughter she’d never had. It was she who asked me to join the family business.”


That business prospered in ways that Estee Lauder could not have imagined when she started it in 1946 with her husband, Joseph. By the time she died last year at the age of 97, the enterprise controlled 45% of the cosmetics business in American department stores, had a market capitalization of $10 billion, and was a Fortune 500 company.


It is striking how frequently in her conversation with a reporter Evelyn Lauder emphasized issues such as her enduring love affair with her husband, family solidarity, parental love, and the importance of humanitarian values. (Her younger son, Gary, is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.)


“If I am a success as a person, it’s largely because I never lost a day being with my two boys in bringing them up as independent, honorable people,” she said. “I always said to them: ‘You have to be who you are. Money comes and money goes. But what you do have with you forever is your character and education. Use your imagination and skills – and you will be able to do anything you want.'”


Notwithstanding her accomplishments in business and marketing, among other things, Ms. Lauder still sees herself as a teacher at heart. She makes it a point to spend as much time as possible with her four grandchildren, students, and young employees.


“I love working with young people, helping them with networking, making introductions,” Ms. Lauder said. “I tell them that the most important thing is to acquire a great education, and not to squander opportunities. Follow your heart. And experience as many things as you can, eliminating those things that don’t truly resonate within you.”


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