Peel away the facade of fabulousness and the lifetime of even essentially the most powerful style star is usually way more fragile than it seems.
Take John Demsey, the previous Executive Group President on the Estée Lauder Firms. A 3-decade Lauder stalwart, Demsey helped steer the corporate from a mid-sized privately-run family concern to a publicly-traded cosmetics giant price, at its peak, over $100 billion.
Last winter, as his father lay gravely ailing and his mother began battling cancer, the remainder of Demsey’s world unexpectedly imploded. In early March 2022, Demsey was forced to retire from Lauder after he reposted an Instagram meme that contained the N-word.
Demsey insisted he’d misinterpreted the meme, which was initially shared by the rapper Chingy.
Despite removing the post inside hours, pressure from each Lauder employees and “call-out” accounts like Estee Laundry saw Demsey’s 31-year profession at Lauder end in precisely per week. Branded a racist — and quieted as a part of a legal agreement along with his former employer — Demsey had been canceled.
“I made a mistake and I corrected it. However the life I had before this happened simply doesn’t exist anymore,” Demsey said of being canceled. EMMY PARK
“It felt like I’d been the victim of an identity theft,” Demsey, 67, told The Post in an exclusive interview, his first for the reason that Instagram fiasco 18 months earlier. “I made a mistake and I corrected it. However the life I had before this happened simply doesn’t exist anymore.”
The mementos of that life cover nearly every surface of the six-story East Side townhouse, which Demsey, who’s divorced, bought in 2018 and shares along with his 14-year-old daughter, Marie-Hélène, eight dogs, and a pair of cats.
Demsey has spent the vast majority of his post-Lauder existence here — sometimes indignant, sometimes depressed, often exercising (he’s dropped 35 kilos), but mostly cooped-up and clearly contrite.
Demsey (second from left) with Leonard Lauder, Sean Combs, and William Lauder. 20 years ago, Demsey brought Combs to Lauder, which developed the rapper’s highly lucrative scent Unforgiven. WireImage for MAC Cosmetics
“I almost feel like I’ve been under house arrest,” he deadpanned. “And once I do exit, people act as in the event that they’ve sat shiva for me.”
Within the multi-billion dollar world of luxury and sweetness, few stars solid a wider shine than Demsey. Tall and imposing, the Stanford-educated exec was equally adept at creating buzz and getting cash.
“Demsey has all the time had a deep sense of what consumers want before they need it,” said Professor Thomai Serdari, Director of the Fashion and Luxury MBA Program at Latest York University, of Demsey’s tenure at Lauder. “He is superb at commercializing brands … while providing the glue that makes ventures work.”
Demsey in June at home with creative director June Ambrose, who describes his departure from Estée Lauder as “disheartening in every way.”Joe Schildhorn/BFA.com
Demsey’s presence at Lauder was particularly potent in two areas: far-sighted promoting campaigns and his chairmanship of the MAC AIDS fund, which has raised $500 million for HIV research over the past 25 years.
Within the ad world, Demsey is best known for the a long time of VivaGlam and Beauty Icon promotions he oversaw for MAC Lots of their stars were black — RuPaul, Rihanna, Diana Ross, Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj. And Demsey’s intimacy with African-American artistry provided him with a level of racial maneuverability rarely afforded to white execs.
“Long before the era of George Floyd, John was probably the most culturally attuned people when it got here to inclusivity,” longtime former Wall Street Journal fashion reporter Teri Agins told The Post. “John was accepted by black people since it all the time felt like he was within the culture.”
Demsey with Diana Ross in 2005 through the debut of her Beauty Icon campaign for MAC. Ross is one among many notable African-Americans to be featured within the brands’ a long time of advertisements under Demsey.Getty Images
Rihanna, seen here with Demsey, also appeared in a MAC campaign.Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Wearing a tan suit and Zegna sneakers, Demsey displayed each incredulousness and humility as he recounted the events of the past yr. He freely described his actions on social media as “silly and impulsive” — a casualty of the near-manic Instagramming which overtook him during Covid.
“I used to be posting like 20 or 30 times a day,” he said. “People really responded to it and it just became this form of a thing.”
The Chingy meme, Demsey explained, appeared randomly in his feed — a Covid-era Big Bird tending to a bed-ridden Snuffleupagus accompanied by the phrase “My n***a Snuffy done got the ’rona at a Chingy concert.”
“Simply because you’re privileged doesn’t mean you’re racist,” Ambrose said of Demsey.EMMY PARK
Demsey insists he read n***a as “nanna” — a nod to Snuffleupagus’ grandmotherly get-up.
“I’ve never used that word in my life,” Demsey said of the racial slur he’s accused of promoting.
Regardless that Chingy himself went on Instagram to defend him, nobody else will ever really know what Demsey was considering when he pushed that share button.
Branded a Lauder liability — and a poster boy for “white privilege” — Demsey’s demise reflects each the punitiveness of this current cultural climate together with a misguided belief in his own indispensability.
Former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons (above) calls Demsey “one among the nice guys.”Corbis via Getty Images
Veteran fashion journalist Teri Agins said, “John was probably the most culturally attuned people when it got here to inclusivity.”Getty Images
“I used to be a little bit of an impresario,” he said. “And people businesses and those that I supported were very successful because that’s the best way I used to be.”
Indeed, what does matter, say longtime Demsey admirers, is his track record of hiring African Americans.
Take Sean “Puffy” Combs, who Demsey dropped at Estée Lauder in 2004 back when other beauty groups were reluctant to sign the rapper for a fragrance deal. Barely a yr later, Combs’ scent Unforgivable had achieved $1.5 million in sales per week, in accordance with The Latest York Times.
Demsey lives on the East Side along with his teen daughter and eight dogs. His blue door has inspired a latest design book.EMMY PARK
“John is one among the nice guys,” said Richard Parsons, the previous Time Warner and Citigroup CEO and Chair of the Apollo Theater Foundation on whose board Demsey served for a decade. “Way back to the ‘90s he was a frontrunner in putting people of color in magazines and photo shoots — he made a difference.”
Years before DEI mandates became standard, Demsey was providing exposure and paychecks to many African-American singers, stylists, and makeup artists.
“For somebody who’s contributed a lot to black culture, to hip-hop culture — to have his profession end like that is disheartening in every way,” said creative director June Ambrose, whose clients have included MAC campaign stars comparable to Missy Elliott and Mary J. Blige.
Demsey’s house is a riot of highly-curated global art, design, and particularly photography — he has greater than 600 photo works in total.EMMY PARK
A white man who earned nearly $10 million in 2021, Demsey is definitely privileged. “But simply because you’re privileged,” Ambrose continued, “doesn’t mean you’re racist.”
Demsey concedes he’s disenchanted by the buddies who did not publicly support him after he left Lauder. Harder still was the lack of the Lauders themselves, whom he had considered an clan.
“I loved the family, particularly [chairman emeritus] Leonard Lauder because I felt that their values were so contrary to what other corporations were about,” Demsey said.
Agins, for one, never imagined the corporate would actually let Demsey go. “Sure, John’s actions were sloppy, but I figured he could be suspended after which Lauder would move past it,” she told The Post.
Demsey brought dressmaker Tom Ford (center, next to Aerin Lauder, style and image director of the Estée Lauder Firms) to Lauder for highly successful fragrance and sweetness lines. Earlier this yr, Lauder bought Ford’s fashion brand for $2.8 billion.WireImage for Estee Lauder
Yet because the very public face of a really public company, Demsey stood little probability of surviving the scandal.
“You can not earn enough accolades to divorce yourself from racial sensitivity,” says Ernest Owens, writer of the book “The Case for Cancel Culture.” “That is about impact — not intent.”
Still, Owens concedes that Demsey was impacted by the company house cleansing that followed the murder of George Floyd. “Had this happened before summer 2020, [Demsey] may need had a really different end result,” he said.
Mary J. Blige, with Demsey, was a MAC star.Getty Images
Nicki Minaj, seen here with Demsey and Kim Kardashian, worked with Demsey in a MAC campaign.Getty Images for EJAF
Yet while Demsey was hardly the one style leader charged with racial insensitivity — Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, as an illustration, issued a mea culpa for “publishing images or stories which were hurtful or intolerant” during her profession — he was one among the few to truly wind up unemployed.
But with Estée Lauder stock down nearly 50% since his departure, Demsey could have actually been more indispensable than the Lauders realized.
Indeed, two years after he brought Sean Combs to Lauder, Demsey also convinced the corporate to launch fragrance and sweetness lines for Tom Ford. Last November, Lauder snapped up Ford’s fashion label for a cool $2.8 billion — the corporate’s first foray into the apparel arena because it was established nearly 75 years ago.
RuPaul in one among the primary Viva Glam campaigns for MAC dating back to the mid-Nineties. MAC Cosmetics
Demsey’s house is a dizzying assemblage of art, furniture, and particularly photography. There are nearly 600 photos in total — from historic prints by Henri Cartier-Bresson to outtakes from Demsey’s many MAC campaigns.
It’s from here that Demsey is readying his next acts. He has no other selection, he said.
“I don’t need to be referred to as the ‘canceled guy’ — for my legacy to be defined by just three hours” on social media.
Demsey’s latest book “Behind the Blue Door” shall be released on October 17.
The book incorporates a foreword by Demsey and was written by fashion scribe and “CBS Sunday Morning”-contributor Alina Cho (above with Demsey).Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Still certain by his reported Lauder non-compete, Demsey has taken on a senior advisory role with L Catterton, the private equity group tied to LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, where he’ll help discover and grow latest business opportunities. Although the headlines accompanying Demsey’s appointment made note of the Lauder saga, NYU’s Serdari believes the business world has moved past it.
“People make mistakes,” she said, “but that shouldn’t take away from his expertise and mental ability.”
There’s also “Behind the Blue Door,” a hefty coffee-table book detailing the museum-like treasures throughout his home, which he co-authored with “CBS Sunday Morning” contributor Alina Cho and is inspired by the vintage blue door fronting his townhouse. The book shall be released on October seventeenth.
“You can not earn enough accolades to divorce yourself from racial sensitivity,” Ernest Owens, writer of “The Case for Cancel Culture,” said of Demsey. “That is about impact — not intent.”
Demsey can be returning to the social swirl he once dominated. In June he hosted a birthday celebration for stylist and costume designer Ambrose at his home where folks like actor Zachary Quinto and Bergdorf Goodman exec Linda Fargo appeared to have moved on from the meme.
And, so has Demsey — whose father ultimately passed away in June 2022, while he moved his mother from Ohio to Latest York to be able to take care of her. “I’m not done — in no way,” he said. “I’ve got loads more in me, loads more to say. The world continues to be a really exciting place.”
dkaufman@nypost.com
