It’s possible Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber would not have become cosmetic moguls without him.
About 25 years ago, Leonard Lauder, the visionary beauty mogul and Estée Lauder chief executive who died on Saturday at age 92, had an epiphany. It was just after 9/11, and the United States was in turmoil and recession. Most things looked grim, except for one.
Lipstick sales, he noticed, were rising, just as they had in the past when times were bad, like in the Great Depression. Perhaps, he thought, women wanted to indulge in small luxuries when a downturn was coming. Perhaps lipstick could even be an economic indicator. Thus the term “the lipstick index” was born.
It was the beauty equivalent of the “hemline index,” the theory that when things were good, skirts got shorter — and it proved to be but one of the enduring ideas Mr. Lauder had first.
“He was the original influencer,” said John Demsey, the former president of MAC Cosmetics.
The eldest son of an entrepreneur mother, Mr. Lauder became a billionaire but ate the same thing for breakfast for years (one fat-free yogurt with a sliced peach and one thin slice of whole wheat bread), could deliver one-liners with a borscht belt sense of timing, and turned one brand into an entire luxury group before the giant fashion luxury groups existed.
He once said, “I see 10 years, 20 years ahead of everyone else.” It may sound egotistic or implausible, but in many ways he turned out to be right. Without Mr. Lauder, it’s possible we would not have Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics or Hailey Bieber’s Rhode.
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