Lauder Legacy

“Mom?”

Just when you’re about to give up prowling the perfume floor like an alleycat who hasn’t seen a sardine for months, life tosses you a live bonito. Walking past the Lauder stand, I noticed a display with five identical fluted bottles and thought, “Eh, probably more ouds.” As happens regularly, I was dead wrong. The sales assistant started spraying strips before I could even begin to decipher the labels. O joy, o disbelief! It dawned on me that I was looking at recomposed versions of the Greats.

I have long been of the opinion that Lauder is the Guerlain of the US, an opinion I used to air as often as possible in France just to watch people squirm. Lauder is also perhaps the only remaining believer in François Coty’s mission statement: “Give a woman the best product you can make. Market it in the perfect bottle—beautiful in its simplicity yet impeccable in taste. Ask a reasonable price for it, and you will witness the birth of a business the size of which the world has never seen.”

This said, I’ve often felt, and told Lauder people whenever I could, that their perfumes were priced too cheap. I remember a shop in Milan called Brigatti that had beautiful cashmere sweaters in the window for a reasonable price. I noticed them, walked in, bought one, and a gloomy Mr. Brigatti told me I was lucky. Contrary to all common notions about the relationship between price and sales, he was about to double the price, because he wasn’t selling any. He did, and a week later, the entire supply was gone. Now Lauder has done the same, but done it cleverly.

The sales assistant told me the perfumes had been art directed by one “Freddie Maul,” and it took me a while to figure out this was in fact Frédéric Malle, just about the most unlikely “Freddie” since Nietzsche. Malle is owner and art director of Editions de Parfums, now home to thirty-seven memorable, beautiful and intelligent perfumes. The firm was sold to Lauder and treated, like Lauder’s other purchases Le Labo and Aveda, with the utmost respect. Hence, I assume, the occasion arose for Malle to have a hand at freshening up the “old” Lauders.

Tania Sanchez has pointed out to me the connection between Lauder and a certain kind of man: first Tom Ford, and now Malle. Her theory is that only dudes of that age and caliber can be expected to both adore the masterpieces their moms wore, and have the nous to give Mom a makeover. Recomposition, as opposed to mere reformulation of classics, should be encouraged, not feared. What stands between an old masterpiece and a young audience is frequently the varnish, not the painting.

I remember hearing Richter’s recomposed Four Seasons and wishing that the same treatment be applied to other classical greats. Every period produces tics as well as inventions, and the old Lauders have —they’re still available— a cast, an accent (I wish I knew exactly which materials or accords were responsible) which now say passé. Malle is clearly a tremendous art director. Much in the way that Thierry Wasser and Delphine Jelk have brilliantly cleaned up the Guerlain classics, Lauder’s classics are back, fresh as paint, compellingly rich and natural, and literally better than ever.

For subscribers: reviews of Legacy Knowing, White Linen, Private Collection, Azurée and Estée.