F
or Aerin Lauder, scion to her grandmother
Estée’s empire and fortune, home is
where the heart is. “This is where I can
entertain and be with family and friends,
or sit on the couch, lie back and relax,”
Lauder says, gliding in her favourite signature
ballet flats around the generously proportioned
apartment, overlooking Park Avenue in Manhattan.
Not much has changed in the 19 years since
Lauder and her financier husband, Eric Zinterhofer,
teenage sons Jack and Will, and the family’s three
dogs, Biscuit, Schatzi and Disco, moved in. Interior
designer Jacques Grange helped to transform the
space into a multi-tasking, happy family home.
She was drawn immediately to the apartment’s
shadow play of sunlight streaming through the tall
steel casement windows, which reminded her of
New York’s glamorous Gilded Age. “Light brings
warmth and life,” she says.
Lauder has worked
with Grange on
many projects, but
here she likes his
eclectic sense of
mixing things like
sisal with beautiful
velvets, and the
way “he structures
a room to feel clean
and inviting, and
then builds on it
with colours, fabrics
and textures to make
it feel personal and
warm, yet elegant”.
It suits Lauder’s
own effortless style
for mixing high and
low. An elaborate
18th-century
Beauvais tapestry
from France and
early-20th-century
Jean-Michel Frank
armchairs happily
sit alongside pieces
from her eponymous
lifestyle collection,
launched in 2012,
such as shagreenserving trays and velvet jewellery boxes. “I like the
energy that comes from something traditional next
to something contemporary,” she says.
Through the tapestry-lined hallway, the living
room opens to a library on one side and a dining room
on the other. “It’s a very gracious layout, the kind
you’d find in a Parisian apartment, with no space
wasted,” Lauder says. “We really use every room.
Kids and dogs are welcome to hang out on the sofas
and my desk is by the window so I can enjoy the
light and the space while I work.” In the dining
room, the table is purposefully round, inviting
more casual conversation because, says Lauder,
“there is no head, everybody is equal”.”
A harmonious colour palette of chocolate, green
and gold is enlivened with a deep slate blue here
and a bright white there. A frisson of excitement
comes with leopard print that graces living room
armchairs and powder room walls (the wallpaper
is one of Lauder’s
own designs for Lee
Jofa). For Lauder,
it acts almost “like
a neutral,” helping
to create rooms that
feel both stylish
and comfortable.
“A clash of pattern
and colour brings
character. I don’t
believe in pulling
a colour from a
painting to find
a fabric to match.
To me, art is a thing
apart, it has its
own reality.”
Contemporary
art punctuates each
space, the legacy
of parents with “an
amazing eye” and
a childhood of
Saturday afternoons
spent traipsing
around New York’s
finest art galleries
and museums
with her former
diplomat father,THIS PAGE FROM LEFT
Aerin Lauder with one
of her dogs, Schatzi. In the
living room, sofa based
on a Jean-Michel Frank
design; Paul Dupré-Lafon
coffee table and leopard-
print armchair; Achrome
(1960) artwork by Piero
Manzoni. In the library,
Maison Baguès chandelier;
Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)
artwork by Gustav Klimt.50 vogueliving.com.auVLife