American style icon Aerin Lauder adds warmth to her home in East Hampton, transforming it into a welcoming year-round retreat for her husband and two sons. This Christmas it’s all about family time.TexT: Kristina Stewart Ward FoToS: François Halard/ www.trunkarchive.com

Aerin Lauder on the porch of her Greek Revival home, all dressed up for the holidays. Aerin wears a gown by Oscar de la Renta and her door wreath and family dog both get a big satin bow.

Happy Holidays!

Estee Lauder’s famed Chinese porcelain decorate the mantle while family friend, Teddy Robertson, busies himself with a pile of presents.

Aerin sets the per-fect holiday table

in front of a roaring fire, inviting guests

to a festive feast with beautifully

wrapped gifts as dessert.

One of the most compelling parts of this Hamptons country retreat is the ease and the humor of the home. The family dog has the run of the place.

Aerin in her kitchen wearing a Robert Cavali dress and Christian Louboutin shoes.

Handsome black lacquered walls, black-and-white David Hicks car-peting and Mark

Hampton armchairs create an ideal

sanctuary for the family’s library, a

room that doubles as a home office for

Aerin’s husband.

“Even in the era when most people thought science drove the beauty in-

dustry,” says Aerin, “my grandmother knew that lifestyle was the real force.”

�

t was important to Aerin Lauder that her country home feel cozy year-round, and in the winter, that

means roaring fireplaces, fur throws on couches and beds, color schemes that work for every season and warm cashmere sweaters for everyone. The Greek Revival home she shares with her husband, Eric Zinterhofer, and two young sons was an inheritance she received eight years ago from her grandmother Estée Lauder, founder of the namesake company which Aerin serves as Senior Vice President and Creative Director. Aerin is widely seen as her grandmother’s heir-apparent, serving as the beauty

brand’s cultural barometer and its highest profile ambassador. She also shares her grandmother’s legendary instinct for approachable glamour.

“Estée worked with Mark Hampton on all of her houses, and she always had amazing taste,” says Aerin, leading a guest through the dramatic, pillared entrance to the 1950s white clap-board house which she expanded a few years ago in order to better accommodate her young family. Three bedrooms, a fa-mily room, library and sprawling kitchen were added to the back end of the house, and making the expansion appear seam-less was an impressive team that inclu-ded Victoria Borus and her firm B Five Studio, architect Chris Pickell, designers Alex Greenwood and Elric Endersby, co-lorist Donald Kaufman and landscape ar-tist Perry Guillot. “We wanted to extend and clarify the original design,” explains Aerin, “not dramatically alter it.” She achieved this by allowing the spirit of the formal rooms to remain while updating them with her own fresh twist.

Estee Lauder’s renowned collection

of blue and white Chinese porcelain still hold pride of place in a formal living room painted pale lavender and in the peacock-blue hued dining room. Aerin enters a sitting room at the front of the house; painted dark orange, its walls are covered in imposing works of art and is dominated by a 1970s coffee table with a sunken center housing barware and glasses that her grandmother once used to entertain. “We love bringing guests here for drinks after dinner.” When Aerin’s hus-band needs to work during the weekend, he retreats to a handsome, book-lined library with black lacquer walls and black-and-white David Hicks carpeting. Family time usually plays out in the double-width pale blue kitchen or in the neighboring family room covered with family photos, the most imposing of them by renowned photographer Tina Barney. Through double French doors there is a patio and hydrangea-filled gardens; a gracious pool house was designed in homage to the famous Slim Aarons photograph of Babe Paley in front of her own pool house in Jamaica.

With all of its elegant spaces and formidable design, one of the most compelling parts of this Hamptons country retreat is the ease and the humor of the home. The family dog has the run of the place, a bas-ket ball hoop and tree house remind visitors that young boys live here, and two train cabooses on the grounds hearken back to the original owners, heirs to a railroad fortune whose sense of whimsy in creating

these fanciful structures (one is now a guest house and the other a play-house for the boys) is mirrored in the home’s current owners.

Aerin and her family travel here on weekends year-round and this holiday they’re dividing their Christmas vacation between East Hamp-ton and a ski trip to Aspen. “Our time in the country revolves around the kids,” says Aerin. “You’ll find us talking long walks with them on the beach with the dogs. In the evening we’ll go out to dinner or a mo-vie; it’s very informal.” The mud room is a testament to the role Aerin’s three men play in her life, with such sporting equipment as lacrosse sticks, wetsuits, a football and baseball bat housed here. This Christ-mas Aerin will add more sporting gear with gifts including a paddle board for her husband and new surf boards for her sons. For her father she’ll buy books and to her mother she will give framed artwork made by the boys.

Traditionally Aerin’s Christmas breakfast is set in the dining room in front of a roaring fireplace. The mantle is covered in pine cones and cypress bran-ches and the Indian colonial table is set using her grandmother’s English cut crys-tal, gold flatware and vintage gold napkins; a Waterford crystal chandelier hangs over-head. Aerin buys gingerbread houses from William poll and she fills little bowls with warm nuts and peppermint sticks; beauti-fully wrapped gifts by each plate completes the picture. She adds flair to gift wrapping with elaborate ribbon which she collects year-round. Aerin has already chosen her look for the most formal gatherings of the coming holiday season, a Lanvin cocktail dress, gold eyeshadow and red toenail po-lish. If Aerin’s attention to holiday beau-ty details seem rather premeditated, we should well remember that she’s in char-ge of—among many things—forecasting beauty trends more than a year in advance as part of her role at the third-generation family dynasty which, in addition to the Lauder flagship division, includes Aveda, Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Jo Malone, La Mer, MAC, Origins and Prescriptives.

Aerin joined the family firm directly out of college 17 years ago, and while she took her time working up through the ranks, the instinctively private young woman has taken an uncharacteristic starring role in the advertising campaign for Estee Lauder’s Private Collection fragrances, a collection she personally developed, packaged and marketed. For the first fragrance, Tuberose Gardenia, Aerin appears in a black-and-white Craig McDean photograph recalling the iconic Skrebneski portrait of Estée Lauder that was used 34 years earlier when Private Collection was first launched by her grandmother in 1973. The most recent fra-grance, which arrives worldwide early next year and is called Jasmine White Moss.

While having such a public role is something her colleagues at Estee Lauder have long requested of her, Aerin’s own style is much more reserved. “Even in the era when most people thought science drove the beauty industry,” says Aerin, “my grandmother knew that lifestyle was the real force.” The natural extension of this thought is that Aerin’s lifestyle is now the driving force of Estee Lauder and her home in the Hamptons—equal parts elegant and joyful—is one of its most compel-ling showcases. KSW

I

Aerin wears an Etro gown and reclines on her Ruhlmann-insired leopard-print couch.

All names and addresses can be found on page xxx.