Smelly people. (PMc)

“It’s not like a lesbian movie—it’s a fun movie.” In retrospect, this conversation, overheard by The Observer Thursday night at The Hole gallery, may not have actually been in reference to “Intense,” the film collaboration for DKNY’s “Be Delicious Intense” fragrance championed by Beatrice Dupine, Veronique Gabai-Pinsky and Enrique Badulescu, but, frankly, we will never really know.

The somewhat spasmodic images of a beautiful blonde, mouth occasionally agape, biting (kind of necessarily, given the advertised scent) into a large green apple, that were projected onto nearly every surface of the gallery were certainly to blame for any potential confusion here. Words like “tense,” “bite” and “intuition” also kissed the walls. The rooms were packed full of surprisingly bad-smelling people, including Kelly Killoren Bensimon and Fern Mallis (though The Observer knows they smelled just fine), and most stared, if not at their phones, then at something else besides the images blinking around them. This further confounded the nature of the event and the film at its center.

Ms. Dupine, the project’s creative director of sorts, explained to The Observer in a thick French accent, flapping her hands constantly for emphasis, that Estée Lauder (the licensee for the potent mixture) had come to her to help develop an “alternative movie for the young.” She said that she went with “happiness” as its overarching theme, but also with wanting to “touch, grab and squeeze ... all of that.” However, if this is happiness, we wonder if the lovely Ms. Dupire is not secretly a pubescent boy. Estée Lauder spokesmodel Hilary Rhoda, slightly lost as to how respond, simply said, with unexpected humor and maybe even a little sarcasm, “Well, I love happiness!” when asked about this take. She was much more comfortable when we told her we really just wanted to ask about her boots, which where thigh-high Burberry. While visually interesting and (as described to us by another guest) socially “electric,” the event on the whole stayed rather confused. The Observer was reminded before leaving to “write about the Free Arts angle.” The charity (Free Arts NYC), on whose board of directors Gabai-Pinsky sits, was also to benefit from the event that evening, and, “happy” to take advice from a stranger, we did.

The popular makeup company is looking to lease a roughly 1,400-square-foot space at 691 Fifth Avenue, a property owned by Vornado Realty Trust, one of the city’s largest commercial landlords.

The space is currently occupied by the skin care company Elizabeth Arden, but Vornado has been marketing the space for rents $3,000 per square foot or higher.

691 Fifth Avenue.

Though rates have risen on Fifth Avenue, the city’s priciest retail corridor, into the high $2,000s per square foot, many brokers familiar with the area say that $3,000 would set a new benchmark.

Sources familiar with the deal say that MAC is only in talks at 691 Fifth Avenue and that a signed lease has not yet been completed. The company, an edgy subsidiary of the cosmetics giant Estee Lauder known for professional grade makeup and its vibrant color palatte, is already a tenant of Vornado at 1540 Broadway. It signed a pricey lease at that building last year and has done well at the location, which is located in Times Square, one of the busiest retail markets in the city.

Given that store’s success, MAC is perhaps more at ease in considering the $3,000 per square foot price tag at 691 Fifth Avenue. Neither Vornado nor MAC could be reached for comment.

Evelyn Lauder.

The sad passing of Evelyn Lauder this week has us wearing our pink ribbons proudly (and also buying up half of Estée Lauder’s cosmetic counter at Bloomingdale’s). The cancer survivor, advocate and entrepreneur was one hell of a lady. You’d have to be to have Estée Lauder as a mother-in-law (we imagine her as the perfume magnate version of Anna Wintour’s surrogate in The Devil Wears Prada). But even a real Mommy Dearest couldn’t hold a candle this week to Patti Labelle. Page Six painted the Lady Marmalade crooner as a terror-inducing psychopath, who scared her 18-month-old so badly that young Genevieve Monk suffered “personality changes.” While we don’t doubt the righteous ire of Ms. Labelle, we also wonder how anyone can tell when a toddler has a mood shift. Does that involve more crying and rending of garments, or less?

Speaking of scary mommies, Piper Laurie—well-known for, among other things, playing the religious lunatic who pushed Sissy Spacek’s wide-eyed Carrie into murdering her entire high school with her mind—has a new memoir out. It’s called Learning to Live Out Loud, which in Ms. Laurie’s case means dishing about losing her virginity to Ronald Reagan at 18. Even creepier, it was on the set of Louisa, where the  future president played the role of her daddy. (We’re just going to go thumb through our tattered copy of Freud ... )

Of course, kids today don’t have to pull a Carrie at the prom to sufficiently alienate their parents and the rest of society; they can simply snag a spot on one of our million reality TV shows. (That said, it’d probably make for better viewing if a Snooki or Kendra Wilkinson-type developed telekinesis—think of the ratings!) And for the aspiring dead-eyed starlets and socialites among you, American Media Inc. is developing a brand new magazine catering to your fantasies of sub-prime time stardom. Reality Weekly will feature a dating column from Victoria Gotti—which we assume will tackle everyday relationship dilemmas (i.e., What to Do When Your Father Puts a Hit Out on Your Boyfriend)—as well as tips and cheat sheets for devotees of America’s guiltiest pleasure.

Which is only a bit guiltier than our other great American guilty pleasure: developing wishy washy conspiracy theories and floating them to see who’ll bite. Which is what The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof did Tuesday when he theorized that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was secretly pro Occupy Wall Street. After all, Mr. Kristof argued, why else would he raid Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night unless he wanted more public sympathy and attention drawn to the OWS movement? We’re pretty sure he had a cheek full of tongue at the time, but one thing’s for certain: if Rudy Giuliani were still mayor, he would have been at the park on day one with the batons out, ready to bend some protesters over his knee for a personal spanking. Next to his predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg’s reticent behavior toward the seemingly unending Occupation is more June Cleaver than Father Knows Best.

But if your eyes glaze over and you start feeling feverish every time you read about protests (which may be a sign you’re getting Zuccotti Lung, the super-flu going around the tent city, so please see your doctor), the antidote could be found Friday night at Avenue in the meatpacking district, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s 37th birthday bash raised $1.3 million for his disaster relief and wildlife preservation charities. (As Estée Lauder once said, “If I believe in something I sell it, and sell it hard.”) Robert De Niro, Naomi Campbell, Bradley Cooper and Edward Norton celebrated with the J. Edgar actor, and an auctioned 15-liter bottle of Veuve Clicquot painted by artist Peter Tunney went for $50,000. We can’t help but think it would have been a little more exciting with a few Patti Labelle-inflicted “personality changes” or Carrie-at-the-prom moments—but then we’ve probably been watching too much reality TV.

Evelyn Lauder and Elizabeth Hurley (Getty Images)

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.

1. Kennedy Fraser's New Yorker profile, “As Gorgeous As It Gets":

Across the table, Evelyn Lauder was talking animatedly about how Beautiful got its name. “I was the one who fought,” she was saying. “I was the one who said, ‘Let’s do it!’ And that’s a true story. I really pushed. Leonard was in the bathtub, and I took the soap and wrote ‘Beautiful’ across the mirror in that big script, like the old Revlon script.” “How do I get a sample?” Andy Warhol asked. Evelyn Lauder produced from her evening purse the refillable quarter-ounce gold perfume spray. He fumbled with the cap, then sprayed some on one hand and behind one ear. “You can keep that,” she told him.

2. David Patrick Columbia's "Another Dimension" for New York Social Diary:

Yesterday, after her death was announced, I got an email from a woman friend in Santa Barbara telling me how when she contracted a strain of leukemia a number of years ago, she called Evelyn asking for advice. Evelyn referred her to one of the best doctors in New York. My friend still has her blood checked by the same doctor. My friend never received a bill. There are scores of stories about women experiencing their first "scare" and Evelyn personally taking them to her doctors, and following up, a kind of Florence Nightingale.

3. Korva Coleman's NPR obituary:

Evelyn Lauder said she learned well before her marriage that her mother-in-law was tough; according to the New York Times (paywall), Estee Lauder "implored" Evelyn to run the birthday party for her son, Leonard, and Evelyn's eventual husband. It was only their second date, but Evelyn accepted. Evelyn said she later spoke more frankly to Estee as she worked in the family business, and credited her childhood as a refugee from the Nazis with her strength of mind.

4. Linda Wells (as told to Elizabeth Angell) for Allure's "In Memoriam":

"In the past few years, she wore a lot of Alexander McQueen, which I just loved. She saw beauty everywhere and captured it in her own landscape and still life photography. I have a photo of rocks that she took, and she made them look luminescent." Wells described how Lauder took to the dance floor during a recent industry charity event, where the Black Eyed Peas were performing. As with so many other things, Lauder led the way and others followed: "She was the first one to get up and dance in the aisles," Wells said. "She did this fantastic kind of Beyoncé move and pretty soon the rest of the room was on their feet."

5. George W. Sledge, Jr., MD on ASCO.org (American Society of Clinical Oncology):

She was sleeping when the ship carrying her from Europe sailed into New York. Her mother woke her up so that she could see the Statue of Liberty. Her powerful commitment to doing the right thing, like that of so many of her fellow refugees to our shores, contrasts ever so starkly with the evil she escaped.

Her life demonstrated what human freedom combined with innate decency could accomplish. Lady Liberty must be shedding some tears tonight for her adopted child.

So goodbye to our good friend, Evelyn Lauder, and our condolences to her husband Leonard and her children, and to her extended family at Estee Lauder who I know will mourn her passing. She defined style, but she was all about substance.

They were there to talk about the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign of Estee Lauder Companies, where Mrs. Lauder is the senior corporate vice president and Ms. Hurley is a spokesperson. They both wore pink: Ms. Hurley a ruffled pink blouse with black trousers, and Mrs. Lauder a pink coat over a black dress and a weighty necklace made of silver-colored glass, netted and on a ribbon, by Oscar de la Renta. “A lot of things are on ribbons this year—it’s very hot,” she said later.

Right before the two were escorted outdoors for the segment, a producer approached Ms. Lauder’s publicist: “How does Ms. Lauder like to be called?”

“Mrs. Lauder,” the publicist replied.

“Mrs. Lauder,” who is 73, was born Evelyn Hauser in Vienna, from which she escaped with her parents during World War II. “It was a very dramatic story,” she told The Observer. “The ship on which we were sailing was one of three in a convoy that went the North Atlantic route, but that route had been mined by the Germans, and the first ship hit a mine and exploded, and we had to take in the survivors.”

In New York, Evelyn attended Hunter College High School and Hunter College. During her freshman year at the latter, a friend invited her to a party to meet two young men the friend had met over winter vacation in Florida. The friend wanted “Bob” to be her date, and so Evelyn would have to go with the one named Leonard. His mother Estee sold makeup; he lived on 77th Street; and he was in graduate school at Columbia.

“Leonard came to my house to pick me up on West 86th Street, he met my father and I went to this party,” Mrs. Lauder said. “When I came home, my father was waiting for me, so I thought something happened because he never waited for me. I said, ‘What happened to Mom?’ He said, ‘Nothing happened to Mom. I just wanted to tell you, that is a nice boy.’”

Mr. Lauder departed for the Navy. But he began phoning Evelyn regularly while away and asked her out for dates when he returned home on weekends. “The problem was that if you didn’t have a date by Tuesday, you were a wallflower,” she said. “So I always had a date Friday or Saturday night, so he would be my Sunday afternoon date. One time he taught me how to drive in a parking lot at Jones Beach. He had a Plymouth. I didn’t release the hand brake and I burned out the lining of his brakes!”

They married in 1959, at the Plaza in front of 150 guests. Since then, Ms. Lauder has become a philanthropist of the scale of the late Pat Buckley and Lady Astor, donating money to the Central Park Conservancy and New Yorkers for Parks, and establishing the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Foundation with her husband. Then, after a breast cancer scare in the ’80s—she was never actually diagnosed—she shifted her efforts, raising $18 million in 1989 to open the first Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Cancer Center; helping to create those Pink Ribbons; and founding the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). And earlier this month, the Lauders’ foundation gave a gift of $50 million to open the new Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, three times larger than the first.

AFTER THEIR  Early Show appearance, the ladies got into their red Lexus and headed to Fox’s Good Day New York, where Ms. Lauder ran into makeup artist Bobbi Brown, CEO of Bobbi Brown cosmetics, which the Lauder company bought in 1995.

“Bobbi! What are you doing here?” said Ms. Lauder, embracing her, and then turning to The Observer. “Bobbi is part of our family.”

Estee Lauder started out selling four products: all-purpose cream, creme pack, cleansing oil and skin lotion. But since Mr. Lauder joined his mother’s business, in 1958, it has grown to include the beauty brands Aramis, Bumble & Bumble, Clinique, La Mer, MAC, Origins, Tom Ford Beauty and Sean John fragrances. After Evelyn married Leonard and left her job as a schoolteacher in Harlem, she, too, joined her mother-in-law.

“She was very chic, very well dressed and had a beautiful home,” Mrs. Lauder recalled of her first meeting with Estee. “At their house on 77th Street, she had an all-white living room, from the carpeting to the silk on the couches to the draperies to the walls. I had never in my life seen an all-white living room!”

Mrs. Lauder added: “She was very welcoming. I would have never [worked for her] if she wasn’t. She said, ‘Someday this will all be yours. I’d really love you to do this with me.’”

The Lauder family members hold the majority of the stock at the public company. Mrs. Lauder’s son William is the executive chairman (son Gary is a venture capitalist based in Silicon Valley); her nieces Aerin and Jane work there; and the elder Mr. Lauder is chairman emeritus. Mrs. Lauder, meanwhile, keeps an office and two assistants, and meets weekly with the fragrance development heads. She would not disclose her salary: “I don’t even know what it is, if you really want to know the truth.”

At Fox’s studios, where Ms. Hurley changed into a different pink blouse, the ladies ran into Sopranos actor Vincent Pastore. “E. Hurley. We were in Mickey Blue Eyes together. Hello!” Ms. Hurley said to Mr. Pastore, jutting out her hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m doing world hunger,” he replied.

“We’re here for breast cancer!” Ms. Hurley said.

“Have you met Los Lonely Boys?” Mr. Pastore said, ushering over the Hispanic rock band from Texas. 

AFTER ANOTHER CREAM couch, another pink shirt from Ms. Hurley and another perky host—at LXTV—the ladies arrived at the Waldorf Astoria’s Presidential Suite. It was noon. “The fixtures in that bathroom—it’s from the ’30s!” Mrs. Lauder told Ms. Hurley and her bodyguard as she appeared from the rest room. In a vast, empty dining hall nearby, they met up with eight co-chairs (Anne Eisenhower, Arlene Taub, and Gail Hilson among them) of the upcoming BCRF luncheon to do a formal tasting and finalize the menu. Tickets are $1,600 each; $1.8 million has already been raised.

Rice-crusted halibut with long beans, shitake mushrooms, coconut sticky rice and ginger passion-fruit sauce appeared. “I think it’s a little white-looking. Can we do something about that?” Mrs. Lauder asked. The chef promptly resolved the problem with a julienne of peppers atop the coconut rice.

Next came wild king salmon and balsamic vinegar-glazed chicken. Among the topics of discussion as the ladies nibbled: Milking pregnant cows gives 11-year-old girls breast cancer; Bergdorf Goodman is empty, but the shoe department isn’t because, according to Ms. Lauder, “You can wear last year’s suit with this year’s shoes”; and, according to Ms. Taub, birth-control pills are responsible for certain strains of cancer and “are the worst thing that has ever happened to women.” Ms. Hilson disagreed: “But they gave women sexual freedom.” To which Ms. Taub retorted: “And what’s so good about that?”

Mrs. Lauder changed the subject to recent advances in reconstructive surgeries. “So are you saying that people with mastectomies can keep their own nipples now?” asked Ms. Hurley.

For dessert, they tried low-fat strawberry parfait, pistachio dacquoise, warm apple-strudel crepes and a Pavlova, which Ms. Lauder found “divine,” but which was overruled by a popular vote for the strudel.

“Do you text, Evelyn?” Ms. Hurley was now asking Mrs. Lauder.

“No. I like handwriting and I like voices,” she replied. 

“What about a BlackBerry?” one of the others asked.

“My thumbs are too fat,” the doyenne said.

Unlike Mrs. Lauder, the young socialites of today seem more concerned about making their reality TV debut than creating a philanthropic legacy. Does she think they understand the responsibility that comes with their social standing?

“I think they do,” Mrs. Lauder said. “You think of Allison Roosevelt and Tory Burch and my nieces Aerin and Jane and my son William and certainly my California son Gary are extremely philanthropic with a great deal of organizations like the Aspen Institute, the Fresh Air Fund and RDC. It is important for us to be able to network with younger people because we can’t live forever.”

After a break, The Observer met the ladies at Bloomingdale’s at 5 p.m., where they would light the department store’s facade pink. Ms. Hurley managed to bring along two brand-new pink outfits, and Mrs. Lauder, having had a chance to change, was now wearing an all-pink dress herself, and heels. Her hair had been redone and her makeup reapplied, and she was smiling her way through the room.

Ms. Hurley said this was entirely in character and recalled when the Lauders attended her wedding to Indian textile heir Arun Nayar in Jodhpur, India, in 2007. 

“They were the last people standing. It was 5 in the morning, they were in turbans and jewelry and they were up dancing to hip-hop!” Ms. Hurley said. “Evelyn has more energy than any teenager I’ve ever met. She just hits the ground and runs.”

ialeksander@observer.com

When the Daily Transom rang Poppy King, the downtown lipstick designer whose clients include actresses Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan and the model Iman, she was so amused by our Poppy series that she immediately told us an anecdote about the first time she met someone with her exact first name at a dinner party last year. This happened to be the British model Poppy Delevigne.

According to Ms King, she and Ms. Delevigne were attending a birthday party for Teen Vogue photo director Jennifer Pastore (formerly of the New York Times Style magazine) when they were introduced.

"Until then the only person I had ever heard of called Poppy was Jamie Oliver’s daughter," said Ms. King. "We were talking about vintage, because she was admiring this dress I had from Topshop. And she said, 'Yeah, I have some great vintage, because my mum was really friendly with Twiggy and Barbara Hulanicki from Biba.' And I was like, 'Oh, well, yeah, you probably do have some really great vintage!'"

Unlike our other Poppys, most of whom moved here from England, Ms. King, 36, is from Australia. When she was 18 years old and was frustrated with never finding lipsticks that had the right shade or texture, she founded her own lipstick brand under the name Poppy Industries. The company grew to become one of the largest cosmetics companies in Australia, but dissolved in 2002 when Ms. King was approached to move to the States and become a "trend spotter and color designer" for Estee Lauder.

After three years, she left the company to write a book, Lessons of a Lipstick Queen, published in 2008 by Atria Books, and subsequently founded her own company again, this time named Lipstick Queen, which is now sold out of Barneys New York and Henri Bendel. (The Observer's own Simon Doonan blurbed Ms. King's book, writing, "Poppy King is the Henry Ford of lipsticks and she shows you how to be a plucky entrepreneur without losing your flossy-flossy.")

"Lipstick is the most misunderstood cosmetic. Women are intrigued by it, but they don’t know how to wear it without looking overdone," said Ms. King. "So I decided to go back to it and demystify it in a way and this time I wanted the product to be the focus, with me sort of secondary."

Ms. King said that changing the name of her company had nothing to do with disliking her name, which was more of a phase she outgrew when she was younger.

"My mother knew a woman named Poppy and she just loved the name. I have a brother and his name is Justin, so it’s not like my mom was a hippy or anything like that," said Ms. King. "She just loved it. And she is a huge fan of Art Nouveau—she’s sort of a Parisophile—so she already collected things with Poppys on them and when I came along she decided that was the name. But I haaated it. I absolutely hated it."

Ms. King continued: "I was so angry at her. You couldn’t get any of those novelty erasers or pencils or pencil cases or name tags or number plates with the name Poppy on it. I just felt so weird having this name. So when I was 9 or 10, I decided I was changing my name to Debbie. I bought a coffee cup that had a rainbow on it and the name Debbie written on it. I put it on my desk at school and said that that was all I would answer to." (Ms. King wrote about this in her book.)

And how did her mother react?

"My mum was horrified!" recalled Ms. King. "She was a bit like Morticia Addams who would get horrified by Pugsley wanting to join scouts or do anything normal. She liked things to be very unique and so that was my ultimate form of rebellion—saying that I was going to be called Debbie!"