The Estée Lauder Cos. Fetes New Fragrance Boutiques

The Estée Lauder Cos. has taken its new store openings to the streets — literally.

The beauty conglomerate recently christened four stores on Prince Street in Manhattan for respective brands — Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, Tom Ford Beauty, Jo Malone London and Kilian Paris — with a celebratory dinner taking place on the street, which saw a bevy of company executives turn out.

Among them: chief executive officer Stéphane de La Faverie, chief brand officer Jane Hertzmark Hudis, president of Americas Tara Simon and senior vice president and general manager of North America for La Mer and luxury brands Kendal Ascher.

“It is the best that the Estée Lauder Cos. has to offer,” de La Faverie said in advance of the dinner. “Every boutique that you go into offers a different experience, a different story, a different emotion.

“This is at the heart of the strategy to continue to delight consumers here in New York City — in the center of New York City,” he continued.

Indeed, the new fragrance row was meant to provide full expressions of each brand and they’re not meant to necessarily resemble each other, or feel like they share ownership, Simon said.

“The special thing about each of these little stores is that they’re so experiential,” Simon said, gesturing to a fragrance chamber — which resembles a mini-hyperbaric oxygen chamber — in the Frédéric Malle door, which is meant to mimic the fragrance’s initial scent as well as its dry-down. The stores are “the most pure expression of a brand that we can make, because we control it fully. It’s 100 percent the brand’s DNA. Even the way we cast the store, with the sales people here, is special.”

In fact, “In here, they’re specialists,” Ascher said in the Tom Ford store. In Frédéric Malle, “They are perfume curators, because it looks like a museum curating art. In Jo Malone, they’re stylists, they style, mix-and-match scents for you, your home and gifts. In Kilian, they’re scent-ertainers.”

For the Kilian Paris store, there’s even a bar counter and stools for shoppers to sit on while they smell. As for the decision to open in SoHo, “It really is where all the cool things in the city come together, it’s very fresh and modern, and so many cool experiences are happening here not just in shopping,” Simon said. “People come here to experience cool things, whether they’re New Yorkers or people coming in from out of town. It’s all about the vibe, the energy.”

Brick-and-mortar stores are part of the company’s overarching strategy to meet new consumers. Per the company’s most recent financial results, the beauty behemoth opened 40 freestanding stores (particularly for Jo Malone and Le Labo) in its 2025 fiscal year. Per the same report, Le Labo and Kilian drove midsingle-digit increases in its luxury portfolio, while Tom Ford fragrances saw retail sales decelerate in North America.

“Fragrance is the moment right now,” Simon said in remarks addressing attendees, noting that, for example, in the case of Tom Ford, it’s North America’s first beauty-specific standalone boutique from the brand. “Jo Malone is a wonderful expression of the brand, and then Kilian — it’s Friday night. Are you ready for a cocktail?”