What words came to mind for the people who wrote Evelyn Lauder‘s obituary this weekend? Cancer advocate? Certainly…the woman pioneered the pink ribbon movement, and though she passed away nongenetic ovarian cancer at 75, her life after being diagnosed in 1989 was dedicated to living with– not dying from– the disease.
Survivor? That too: not just of cancer, but of Nazi-occupied Austria, which she fled from as a small child.
Fashion icon and perfume entrepreneur? Without a doubt. Though her mother-in-law Estee who may have founded the company and ran it with an iron nose, Ms. Lauder brought her own touch to the Estee Lauder brand; turning the small company into one of the most successful cosmetic companies in the world.
There are a lot of other words that fit Ms. Lauder as well: Benefactor, nurse, wife, mother, patron, New Yorker. ( The last in the truest sense of the word…an immigrant from “somewhere else” who consumed the city instead of letting it consume her.) To try eulogize Ms. Lauder would be like picking adjectives out of a hat made from cut-up stories of Princess Di, Mother Teresa, and Coco Chanel. So instead, we honor her memory by bowing to the best stories told from the people who knew her.
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