This essay originally published in the Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025 edition of the Fortune Archives newsletter.
In 2005, a year after Estée Lauder died at the age of 97, the cosmetics company she founded was at a crossroads. As the Fortune feature writer and editor Daniel Roth wrote that year: “Estée Lauder’s empire was built during the age of the great department stores, when the destination for the latest fashions and styles was Neiman Marcus, not Target. That era ended long ago. Yet about 40% of the company’s sales still come from mostly older customers at these one-time giants in the U.S.”
Twenty years later, those department stores are still struggling to stay relevant, and the beauty-counter mainstay is still battling for a younger demographic, as Fortune senior writer Phil Wahba wrote this month: “Estée Lauder skin care and cosmetics brands that took off with boomers and Gen X have failed to win fans among consumers under 40.”
One big difference between the brand then and now is its leadership: In 2005, a trio of third-generation Lauders were leading the business that their grandmother, born as Josephine Esther Mentzer, founded in 1946 to escape her childhood in Corona, Queens (a neighborhood, Roth wrote, then “known for its trash” and for the dumping of ash). There was then-CEO William Lauder; Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, who oversaw the Estée Lauder brand’s image; and Jane Lauder, a vice president at a division exclusive to Kohl’s called BeautyBank. “William, Aerin, and Jane all exude earnestness as if it’s the next big fragrance,” Roth observed.
Now, as Wahba wrote, “the C-suite is without a Lauder for the first time ever.” And its new CEO, Stéphane de La Faverie, faces an uphill battle to regain Estée Lauder’s dominance of a global beauty sector that has become far broader and more diverse.
Strategic fumbles in recent years, such as over-investment in China’s luxury market, led to stock declines that have stripped more than $100 billion from the company’s value. And with an international trade war looming and a 6% sales slump last quarter, the company announced this month that it may trim as many as 7,000 jobs by fiscal 2026, more than 11% of its workforce.
Will the brand pull off another comeback? That remains to be seen. But Estée—the name that formidable girl from Queens created, along with a company that would go on to make billions and employ many thousands—still carries real weight in American retail.
