He has capitalized on the human tendency of not so secretly adoring sex. He put Gucci on the hot sphere of mass consumption...luxe for all...
"When sex goes out of business, so do we."
A bon mot of brilliance delivered back when by Estée Lauder, one her son Leonard Lauder takes considerable delight in repeating.
Assuming the beauty doyenne was correct, these should be heady times for the house she founded. This month will see the first fruits of Lauder's curious marriage with Tom Ford, the man for whom sex and style are virtually synonymous. "We've always tried to position ourselves where we're selling something that's really sexy," says Leonard Lauder, the company chairman. "That's the cornerstone of Estée Lauder."
W: These pictures look futuristic-creepy—not a celebration of beauty.
TF: We are futuristic; we're on the cusp of being able to manipulate humans genetically to grow into whatever we think looks good. The moment we can start manipulating genes, how long are our legs going to get? Beauty used to be all about cream and lotions, and now it's not. It's about Botox. It's about fillers. It's about mini facelifts. We've reached a level of manipulation. And then of course I'm portrayed as the one doing the manipulating…the polishing, buffing, shaping, which is what I do. It's just what we do. What the fashion industry does.
