La Vie En Lauder

AT HER NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN SOIGNÉ FAMILY APARTMENT, WHERE EVERY WINDOW FACES THE EIFFEL TOWER, ED GETS AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT AERIN LAUDER IN THE CITY OF LIGHT.

- Dana Thomas

AERIN LAUDER FIRST SAW PARIS AS A FIVE-year-old, with her grandmother, the cosmetics legend Estée Lauder, in 1975. “We stayed at the Plaza Athénée hotel, went to the Relais Bar restaurant, and had the most amazing roasted chicken and French fries,” Lauder recalls, sitting on the Jean Royère sofa of her family’s Left Bank pied-à-Terre on a bright summer morning. “I was so excited to be here. I was excited by all the beauty.”

She still is. Several times a year, Lauder jets to Paris for her beauty, home decor, and fashion company, Aerin, or for a holiday with her family. But no Plaza Athénée suite is needed. In the early 1990s, her parents, Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder, purchased a three-bedroom apartment across from Les Invalides. “They fell in love with the view”—of the Eiffel Tower, the ornate gold dome of Les Invalides, the sunsets—“and the location,” right smack in the center of the city. To renovate it, they hired Antoine Stinco, the French architect who had recently redone the Jeu de Paume galleries in the Tuileries Garden. Stinco erased the flat’s Frenchness, refitting it with a sycamore interior that makes it feel “as if you’re on a boat, with a lot of built-in headboards and night tables,” Lauder says. “It really has this wonderful, peaceful feeling in the midst of this lively city.”