Perched on Dean Martin’s leather director’s chair in the VIOLET GREY studio, Rodin is the picture of elegance. Her signature look (immortalized in drawings by @Drawbertson and The Row’s Pre-fall 2014 campaign) consists of shimmering silver hair (loosely coiffed, always perfect) and a shock of bright crimson on her lips. She’s a woman who knows what she wants, a quality that led to the creation of her signature product and the founding of her brand. “I’ve been on photo shoots with every great makeup artist and hairdresser, and I would always look at their tables and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go out and buy that and try that,’ [but] I never really found what I liked,” she says.
 
Eight years ago, Rodin took matters into her own hands—and vanity—and concocted a face oil to satisfy her desires. The first batch, comprising 11 essential oils thrown into a coffee cup in Rodin’s bathroom, provoked a true eureka moment. And when she started showing up to set with her homemade oil in tow, models and makeup artists began to ask for bottles of their own. But it wasn’t until a visiting nephew encouraged Rodin to make it official and measure out her formula that Rodin Olio Lusso was born.

Eleven products and a cult fashion following later, Rodin the company is beginning a second act of its own after a recent acquisition by the Estée Lauder family of brands. Just more than a year out, Rodin herself seems liberated. “They understand me. They understand that I don’t have to make a hundred lipsticks, that it’s a very personal point of view and a lifestyle point of view, and they really embrace that,” she says of the Lauder brass. She is also relishing the opportunities that come with life under Lauder’s wing, such as developing a line of lipsticks slated to launch early next year. “If anybody can make a lipstick, it’s Estée Lauder,” Rodin proclaims. But to her earlier point, the collection features a tight edit of four lipsticks, not 400. (Three are her signature brights; the fourth is an homage to the color her mother wore (“a cross between strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry—I haven’t seen anything like it”). And the beauty world has never seen anything quite like Linda. Read on for more pearls from the elegant innovator.