Aerin Lauder On Growing Up With Estée Lauder, Building Her Own Legacy & The Secrets To Living Beautifully

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:00)
My goodness, today is fun. We are joined by Aerin Lauder. She is the founder and the creative director of Aerin. In this episode, you're going to get to know Aerin. She is one of the most influential voices in luxury, beauty, and design. She is the granddaughter of the beauty icon Estée Lauder.
I mean, she really grew up with front-row seats to one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, but she's also built a legacy of her own. She's opened stores. She has a global lifestyle brand and she's a mother and a wife. She also happens to be a frequent co-chair of the Met Gala. As you can see, she's very much a tastemaker. Aerin Lauder, welcome to The Bossticks.
If you were writing the Aerin Blueprint of how to host, how to set a table, how to have a beautiful grounded life, what would it look like?

**Aerin Lauder** (0:52)
Well, I actually love a more traditional approach to life, and I actually used that when I set the table as well. I think a lot of the inspiration really comes from my grandmother, Estée Lauder, and my mother, who have both been really important parts of my life.
And they really taught me everything about style and entertaining.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:09)
When you grew up with two amazing figures, like your mother and your grandmother, what was that like? Walk us through that.

**Aerin Lauder** (1:17)
Well, you know, Estée was an extraordinary mentor. And, you know, I called her Estée because she did not want to be called Grandma.
And even when she passed away, no one really knew how old she was. And, you know, the one thing I do regret is not having the opportunity to work with her. Because when I graduated from universities when she got older and then took a step back, but I did watch her, you know, create beautiful products and I would see her working at home. She always used to work at home. I mean, she went to work every day till she was about 83 Well, and she was extraordinary. And, you know, there's so many amazing quotes from her. You know, everything can be beautiful if you take the time. You know, you only have one face, take care of it. A wardrobe of fragrances. And a lot of these quotes have inspired me and my brand. And I was actually at Estee Lauder for 25 years before I started my brand. So I had a lot of experience and learnings and got the confidence and the green light to start my own brand about 12 years ago. But my mother and my grandmother were so important to me in everything that I did and do. And I still think about them all the time, especially my grandmother.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:17)
It seems like she really instilled work ethic.

**Aerin Lauder** (2:20)
She really did. You know, she was the American dream. She started the brand in 1946 Her parents were Hungarian immigrants.
She lived in Corona, Queens. She started it in her garage. Her uncle was a dermatologist, and her parents did not even speak English very well. And she really wanted to create this lifestyle, not lifestyle, beauty brand. And she did it with only a few products in the beginning. And it was very clever because she created Gift with Purchase.
And she was a brilliant marketer. I mean, her whole idea was like, no matter who you are, every woman likes a gift. And there's a great story. She was launching in the UK, and she was one of the first American brands to go into international markets. And she was in the UK in the 70s, and she's at the counter, and this beautiful Bentley shows up. And it was the Queen's Lady in Waiting who said, I have the Queen's Gift with Purchase, and I'm here to pick it up for her. So Estée, you know, Estée used to say, a woman knows what a woman wants. And she was so true about that. And it's kind of extraordinary.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:21)
The gift with purchase. I remember my mom going into Nordstrom's and getting the gift with purchase, and I would always try to steal it. That was very, very genius. How did she have the eye to do things like that? Was it natural?

**Aerin Lauder** (3:33)
She had an incredible intuition. I mean, she really did. You know, she also kind of encouraged women to buy fragrance for themselves. She launched something called Youth Dew, and it was the first fragrance that was really also positioned as a bath oil. Because at the time, women were not allowed to really, weren't encouraged to buy fragrance for themselves. You had to wait for someone to give it to you. So by giving, you know, positioning it as a bath oil, gave women the freedom to purchase it themselves. And there was this great story, you know, she couldn't afford sampling. And she spilled the Youth Dew all over the floor.