Content area
Full Text
NEW YORK -- An epoch has ended.
Estee Lauder, the last of the American beauty queens who symbolized and defined the growth of the modern beauty industry, is dead. She was 95 years old, according to New York State Board of Elections records, although some reports say she was two years older, or 97.
She died late Saturday at home in Manhattan due to cardiopulmonary arrest, according to a spokeswoman at the Estee Lauder Cos., the firm that she founded with her husband Joseph in 1946 that went public in 1995. A private internment, attended by the family, was held Sunday. A memorial service is expected, but details have not yet been arranged.
Lauder either invented, developed or established many of the commonly used sales and marketing techniques that serve as today's mainstay of department store beauty marketing and merchandising. Anecdotes and recollections of Estee Lauder's rise to power and colorful reign became so plentiful that they provided a folklore for the modern American cosmetics industry.
Lauder went from peddling a handful of products to beauty salons in the New York area to chairing an international beauty powerhouse with a volume of $5.12 billion. She did so with a mix of tenacity and style and an unshakable belief in herself, her products and -- perhaps most importantly -- her family.
Her son, Leonard A. Lauder, who helped build the company and remains chairman, said, "My mother was passionate about three things: her family, the wonderful company she founded and her mission of bringing beauty into the lives of women everywhere. She was an inspiration to the women she touched through her products and appearances through the years, the employees of the Estee Lauder Companies and, above all, to her family."
Her other son, Ronald Lauder, chairman of Clinique Laboratories, added, "My mother was not only a rare business woman, but also an extraordinary mother, grandmother and wife. She brought joy, unique vision and determination to all things."
Philip Miller, a former Saks Fifth Avenue and Marshall Field's chief executive officer, said that at Saks, the first major store to carry Lauder, "It was always a major happening when she came into the store. She really was one of the originators and founders of the beauty...