Introducing: Trump x Estée Lauder
The Don't Buy List: Issue #36
Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! Before we start, I’d like to take a moment to honor Queen Elizabeth II and her celebrity beauty brand, Happy Hounds Dog Cologne: a line of perfume for dogs. The Queen set the bar for just how unnecessary a celebrity beauty brand could be, and she should be remembered for it.
Anyway!
Right after I published this piece on Fashion Week beauty trends, I got a press release announcing that Starface was “the First Pimple Patch to Walk the Runway” at the Puppets and Puppets SS23 show. And like… cool, I guess? I just do not get the “skin positive” hype around decorative pimple patches. I’m convinced they’re only popular because they allow people to feel like they’re challenging beauty norms without actually challenging anything. You get all the self-congratulatory glory of rebellion with none of the risk. The pimple is still being covered! The zit is still being zapped! It would be way more revolutionary to showcase acne on the runway, would it not?
In bizarre beauty news: Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, “Convinced Trump That the U.S. Should Buy Greenland,” reports the New York Times. “Mr. Lauder discussed it with him from the early days of the presidency and offered himself as a back channel to the Danish government to negotiate.” A friend of Trump’s since their college days, the cosmetics tycoon also donated funds to Trump’s 2020 campaign for re-election. I tried to talk about the Lauder-Trump relationship in this Coveteur piece at the end of 2020, but my editor removed that section… maybe because Estée Lauder Companies is a major advertising force in the industry? Who can say! Here’s the short explainer I tried to publish: