Clinique Again Chooses an Editor as President

Clinique Laboratories Inc., a major cosmetic maker, has named its second woman and second journalist president.

Karen Anderegg, 46, is leaving her position as editor-in-chief of Elle, an international fashion magazine, to head the New York company.

Clinique, a division of Estee Lauder Inc., has become one of the best-selling department store brands because of the popularity of its fragrance-free, allergy-tested products.

While Anderegg, who had also been a managing editor at Mademoiselle magazine, has written about cosmetics since 1963, she has no experience working for a makeup company. But then again, neither did her predecessor, Carol Phillips, who was an editor at Vogue when she was named Clinique’s first president 19 years ago. Phillips will become chairman of Clinique.

“I feel extremely optimistic. I feel I have a lot of skills that are transferable,” Anderegg said.

Anderegg said she believes that creativity and business are not disparate. “That’s an old-fashioned concept,” said the Council Bluffs, Iowa, native.

“The fact that Carol (Phillips) started with a similar background I find very encouraging,” she said.

Phillips helped make the company--which lost about $20 million in its first four years--into what industry sources say is the nation’s second-largest department store cosmetic brand with about $350 million in sales last year. Privately held Lauder does not release its financial results.

Allan Mottus, who heads a leading cosmetic consulting firm in New York, said the best-selling department store brand was the Estee Lauder line--named for the parent company. He noted that fragrances accounted for a third of the Lauder line’s revenue.

However, if only makeup and skin care products are considered, Clinique would be No. 1 in the department store market.

Anderegg, who readily admits that she knows nothing of cosmetic formulations, believes that she can learn the ropes of running a cosmetic company.

“I think that my experience and my approach toward the readers of a magazine really is very similar in many ways to Carol’s (Phillips) approach to the Clinique consumer,” she said. “That’s one that is based on a high degree of credibility and respect for the consumer . . . that what she is being given is something we would like to be given ourselves.”