Aerin Lauder, the founder of the lifestyle company Aerin, has always admired the classic, heritage sensibility of Mark Cross, one of America’s first and most enduring luxury brands. When founding her own company, Lauder found herself honing in on the same central tenets of the leather goods house: “Both brands are inspired by effortless American style and design pieces that are elevated, yet timeless,” she says. So perhaps a collaboration between the two was inevitable.
This May, Aerin and Mark Cross will launch a line of lifestyle accessories inspired by the classic American summer. There’s a tennis racquet cover, a bag for gardening tools, as well as “throw everything in” totes perfect for a trip to town. “We felt that these pieces were stylish and feminine, yet sporty and timeless,” says Lauder. “We were very intentional about the pieces that we chose because we wanted there to be something for everyone.” (Although the Garden Bag, in particular, was something for her: “I am always cutting fresh flowers and bringing them indoors to place around my home, [so] the Garden Bag is perfect to carry my flowers and gardening tools,” she says. An added bonus: it comes a set of Sneeboer tools.)
Lauder specifically chose natural materials and a neutral color palette, evoking Nantucket shingle-style houses in Sconset, or Hamptons estates overlooking the dunes of Georgica Beach. She and her family are famed residents of the former: Lauder’s grandmother, Estée Lauder, owned a house designed by Mark Hampton that has been passed down through the generations. (In 2006, the home was photographed for Architectural Digest.) Since then, Lauder has contemporized parts of the compound. “I’ve started leaning toward more neutral backgrounds, as they give me the flexibility to play with various colors. I tried to embrace what my grandmother had done but with a fresh twist,” she told Jennifer Ash Rudick in the book The Lauder Style.
The languid summer July days she’s spent on Nantucket also served as inspiration: “Summer is my favorite time to be outdoors with family and friends,” she says. With her Mark Cross accessories, it may now be the most fashionable time too.