When the late Leonard Lauder turned toward something, he was all in. Tall, lanky, and relaxed—most of all, he was relaxed, the kind of relaxed that flows from an unwavering inner strength and allows for intense curiosity and true generosity—he was interested in everything, but especially of all, people.
I was a fledgling beauty editor when I met Leonard, but he took the time to make me feel seen and appreciated nonetheless. I’d written a story about his wife Evelyn’s photography, and I swear, thirty years later, he’d still bring the story up whenever we saw each other. The first Lauder holiday party I went to was at his apartment; as I stood in a ballroom all but wallpapered in the Braques and Picassos he loved, I started to understand the intensity of his passion and focus. That understanding deepened over the years, as he expressed his all-out enthusiasm for people he believed in—Bobbi Brown, Marianne Diorio, William Lauder, Aerin Lauder—elevating them in ways perhaps even they never imagined.
Of course, Leondard was brilliant. But he was also kind, honest, courtly, and fair, with a powerful faith in other people. He laughed easily, always kept his cool, and he had an absolute genius knack for selecting the perfect person to run with whichever ball he’d set in motion. Witness: Companies from Origins and MAC to Jo Malone, Clinique, and La Mer; museums from the Whitney and the Metropolitan to the MoMA and the Neue Gallery; and research organizations from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. I watched every year as the stage at the Waldorf-Astoria was crammed for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s Annual Gala—literally crammed—with breast-cancer researcher after breast-cancer researcher, so that we might appreciate each and every one of them, along with the enormity of the cause that he had all brought us there to support.
Leonard once told a story about himself: When he was young, he had introduced several women he was dating to his mother, the Estée Lauder. She told him she thought Evelyn was “the one.” He proposed. But there was a moment, he said, as he stood at the altar watching Evelyn come down the aisle, when he realized suddenly, like a thunderclap, how truly beautiful she was. How fortunate he was, and how critical the decision he was making. “I saw, I saw her,” he said, his voice breaking as he told the story.
Leonard saw people. He appreciated them. If you were speaking to him in a crowded room, no matter who you were, he was relaxed enough to focus on you, be curious about you, and see your dignity. There’s the kind of vision that involves steering things in the direction you want them to go, a future-looking vision, and then there’s the kind that happens in the present, seeing people and situations and sensing the potential there. Leonard, of course, had both, but it’s the second that so endeared him to the world, and why it’s so hard for us to let him go.
