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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Estée Lauder
11distinguished individuals to receive Medal of Freedom at the White House
Estée Lauder
President George W. Bush will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor on Wednesday June 23, 2004, to Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, actress Doris Day, golfer Arnold Palmer, politician Edward Brooke, historian Vartan Gregorian, National Geographic Society Chairman Gilbert Grosvenor, cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder, actress Rita Moreno, ophthalmology researcher Arnall Patz, journalist Norman Podhoretz and economist and banker Walter Wriston the White House announced Friday.
They will join Pope John Paul II and journalist Robert Bartley as 2004 recipients.
President Truman established the award in 1945 to honor civilian contributions during World War II. It was reinstated by President Kennedy in 1963 to recognize distinguished peacetime service. The medal has been conferred on roughly 400 individuals since its introduction.
Bush will present the medals at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, although the president delivered the award to the pope during a visit to the Vatican earlier this month.
Honorees are recommended to the president by a Distinguished Civilian Service Awards Board. Past recipients include former presidents, astronauts, entertainers, scientists, religious leaders and victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mrs. Estée Lauder
The Estee Lauder Company was founded in 1946 in New York City by Mrs. Estée Lauder and her husband, Joseph Lauder.
Estée Lauder, who passed away in April 2004 at the age of 97, was a beauty-industry icon who literally changed the face of the cosmetics industry. The Estée Lauder Companies’ Founding Chairman, she was known for her personal selling approach and insistence on the highest quality, which have become the foundation of a global business that now sells over 18 brands in more than 130 markets around the world.
Born Josephine Esther Mentzer, Estée Lauder was raised in Corona, Queens, by her Hungarian mother, Rose, and Czech father, Max. The name Estée was a variation on her family nickname, Esty. Always interested in beauty, she was mentored by her chemist uncle, John Schotz, and began her business selling the skin care products he developed to beauty salons and hotels. She married Joseph Lauder, who became her partner in the business, in 1930. Her talent for sales led to a counter at New York City’s Saks Fifth Avenue in 1948, followed by agreements with other leading department and specialty stores such as Neiman Marcus, which began selling Estée Lauder products in 1950. In 1960, the Company opened its first international account at Harrods in London.
Although skin care was her first enterprise, Mrs. Lauder also became a world-renowned fragrance nose. Under her direction, the Company introduced Youth Dew in 1953, followed by launches including Aramis in 1965, Aliage in 1972, Private Collection in 1973, White Linen in 1978, JHL in 1981 and Beautiful in 1985. The Estée Lauder Companies now markets more than 70 fragrances.
Over the years, Mrs. Lauder and her team of executives added four new brands to the Company’s portfolio: Aramis, a line of prestige fragrance and grooming products for men, was launched in 1964. Clinique, the first dermatologist-guided, allergy-tested, fragrance-free cosmetics brand, followed in 1968. Prescriptives, a color authority with an advanced collection of highly individualized products, was founded in 1979. Origins Natural Resources, a line of skin care, makeup, bath and body, and Sensory Therapy' products combining age-old remedies from nature with advanced science, was introduced in 1990.
In the 1990s, the Company began a series of acquisitions. It bought a majority equity interest in M·A·C in 1994, completing the acquisition in 1998. Bobbi Brown was purchased in 1995, followed by Aveda, a leader in the U.S. prestige hair care industry, in 1997. In 1999, the Company bought Stila Cosmetics, Inc., a Los Angeles-based, prestige cosmetics company, and Jo Malone, the London-based marketer of prestige fragrance and skin care products. In 2000, the Company acquired a majority equity interest in New York-based Bumble and bumble LLC, a premier hair salon, and Bumble and bumble Products LLC, a developer, marketer and distributor of quality hair care products. During this decade, the Company also became the global licensee for fragrances and cosmetics for Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karan New York. The Estée Lauder Companies went public in 1995.
Perhaps Mrs. Lauder's most important legacy is her belief that in order to make a sale, you must touch the customer. She rarely missed the opening of a new Company door and spent a great deal of time behind the counter, advising customers and teaching the Company’s Beauty Advisors her philosophy and sales techniques. “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it,” she often reminded her sales force. Mrs. Lauder traveled near and far in pursuit of her goals, from Manhattan’s SoHo, where she would visit the Origins store overseen by her grandson William, now Chief Operating Officer of The Estée Lauder Companies, to Moscow, where the Company opened a store in 1981.
A passionate advocate of sampling, Mrs. Lauder used her early promotional budgets to entice customers to the Estée Lauder counter for a free gift and to distribute samples at fashion shows. She also pioneered the idea of “gift with purchase” by giving customers who bought Lauder products free packets of other offerings they might like. One of her favorite quotes was “Tell-A-Phone, Tell-A-Graph, Tell-A-Woman”, based on her conviction that once a woman tried the product, she would like it and then share it with her friends.
When the Company began to advertise, Mrs. Lauder insisted that its print images portray beauty that was both aspirational and approachable. In 1962, Estée Lauder began the practice of selecting one model to be the “face” of the brand. Over the years, supermodels Karen Graham, Willow Bay, Paulina Porizkova, Elizabeth Hurley and now, Carolyn Murphy, have represented Estée Lauder. Mrs. Lauder was also deeply involved with the Company’s package design. Among her many contributions was the choice of Estée Lauder’s signature blue, which she believed would coordinate with the décor of most bathrooms and bedrooms.
Family was as important to Mrs. Lauder as business, and family and business unite in the Company. Her son, Leonard, officially joined her in 1958, serving as President from 1972 to 1995 and as Chief Executive Officer from 1982 to 1999. He has been Chairman since 1995. Her son, Ronald, now Chairman of Clinique Laboratories, Inc., and Leonard’s wife, Evelyn, now Senior Corporate Vice President, also became involved early on. Today, several of Mrs. Lauder’s grandchildren play an active role: In addition to William, Aerin Lauder is Vice President of Global Advertising for Estée Lauder, and Jane Lauder is Vice President of Marketing for BeautyBank. Her fourth grandchild, Gary, is Managing Director of Lauder Partners LLC. There are six great grandchildren. Mrs. Lauder's husband, Joseph, died in 1982.
Mrs. Lauder received numerous honors through the years. In 1967, the American Business Women’s Association (ABWA) named her one of 10 Outstanding Women in Business in the United States. She also received the Cosmetic Executive Women’s President’s Award for excellence in her field in 1989 and the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion in 1962 and again in 1992. The American Society of Perfumers gave her its first Living Legend award in 1994. In 2002, the United States Department of Commerce named her the International Business Leader of the Year through its New York Export Assistance Center and New York International Trade Alliance. Mrs. Lauder supported numerous charitable causes, including many civic and cultural programs, such as the restoration of the palace at Versailles, as well as the projects of The Lauder Foundation, including the building of several playgrounds for children in New York City’s Central Park.
After her retirement in 1995, Mrs. Lauder continued to make personal visits to department store counters until her health began to decline. Her focus on the details at every juncture, emphasis on the highest possible quality standards, intuitive sense of the consumer and passion for excellence remain the Company’s most important values today. Ultimately, her first and deepest passion was beauty. “In a perfect world, we’d all be judged on the sweetness of our souls, but in our less than perfect world, the woman who looks pretty has a distinct advantage and, usually, the last word,” she wrote in her autobiography, Estée, A Success Story (Random House, 1985). “You may have great inner resources, but they don’t show up as confidence when you don’t feel pretty. People are more apt to believe you and like you when you know you look fine. And when the world approves, self-respect is just a little easier.”
Estée Lauder fixed face creams in her kitchen in the 1930s. In 1998, Mrs. Lauder was the only woman on Time magazine's list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the century.
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Medal History
