Lauder as leader

The Company I Keep By Leonard A. Lauder Published by Harper Business Hardcover, S$57

ON Nov 17, 2020, when millions of people around the world were snapping up the just-released Barack Obama memoir, the fashion set was thumbing through an entirely different autobiography.

Leonard A Lauder, the man who turned his mother's modest skincare brand Estee Lauder into a global empire, had chosen to release The Company I Keep on the same day as Obama's A Promised Land. And though Lauder's hardcover is hefty at 432 pages, Obama's memoir - Part One! - is heftier still at 768 pages.