Nearly anyone who knows Aspen knows the Paepcke name—that is, Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke. Like Aspen royalty, they are the founding father and mother—the original thought leaders—of the beloved Colorado mountain retreat as we know it today.
During the 1940s, the Paepckes arrived in Aspen as so many do: to ski. Instantly smitten with the fresh air, jaw-dropping mountain landscapes, and pervasive sense of pure optimism those elements fostered in them, the couple began to lure more of their well-heeled friends to join them. Artists and architects, intellectuals and politicians—they all came together to embody what became known as the “Aspen Idea.” In short, it was the belief that the town could be a place where people would come to nourish their minds, bodies, and spirits through art, music, education, and discussion, as well as physical activities like hiking and skiing. The driving notion was simple: Aspen was the key to a better self.
Today, their vision lives on throughout Aspen, in Paepcke Park, a beloved green oasis surrounded by 360-degree mountain views in the heart of downtown; in museums and venerable institutions like the Bayer Center and the Aspen Institute; in annual events like the Aspen Ideas Festival; and at Hotel Jerome, Auberge Collection, the legendary landmark owned by Dan Friedkin and part of The Friedkin Group.
The Aspen Idea also endures through a new generation of tastemakers: artists, collectors, athletes, and entrepreneurs—all modern Paepckes in their own right, drawn by the powerful lure of inimitable Aspen.
Aerin Lauder has referred to her home in Aspen as her “tree house.” It’s an appropriate metaphor for the place where Lauder—successor to one of the most famous beauty dynasties and founder of the lifestyle brand Aerin—retreats to unwind, disconnect, and escape the frenzy of Manhattan.
When Lauder and her brood—husband Eric Zinterhofer and the couple’s two grown sons—arrive at their modern glass house nestled in the trees, it’s strictly family time. After a day on the slopes, they retire to their cozy perch, designed by her friend, the architect and interior decorator Daniel Romualdez, for family-style meals, board games, and watching classic films around the fire. Lauder finds the escape to be more than good for her soul; it’s good for business too. Taking in the majestic beauty of her surroundings has inspired her namesake brand’s candles, tableware—even a backgammon set.
It was her uncle, the late Leonard Lauder, who first introduced her to Aspen, 50 years ago. Back then, the mountain town was known more as a haven for ski bums and bohemians than billionaires with Lear jets. “That was the real heyday,” Lauder recalls of her earliest visits. “I remember doing the first tracks with my uncle as a little girl.” She would carve through the fresh powder first thing in the morning—a tradition she carries on today.
Lauder still leans into Aspen’s vintage side, preferring old-school eateries like French Alpine Bistro for crepes in the morning, or Hickory House Ribs, a no-fuss barbecue joint. She’s a regular at Hotel Jerome, Auberge Collection—itself an icon for its Jerome Wheeler architecture dating to the late 19th century—as well as Gorsuch, the original Colorado ski outfitter that opened its doors in town in 1978. She’s also an ardent fan of Kemo Sabe for its commitment to the enduring craft behind Western wear. Occasionally, she indulges in the modern Aspen scene too: dinner at Casa Tua, cocktails at the Caribou Club.
Kemo Sabe’s outpost in Aspen.
Still, Lauder prefers the low-key Aspen of her youth. No, you will not find her at Cloud Nine, the popular ski hut perched at 11,000 feet, dancing on tables and shooting Champagne guns. Instead, she usually hides out during the high season, preferring the quiet of late winter and spring, when “the very same mountains covered in snow become a riot of wildflowers”—a beautiful rebirth that reliably arrives every year, just like Lauder herself, ready for another recharge.
“There’s something about being in nature here in Aspen that makes people less guarded and more open,” says Jen Rubio, co-founder of Away luggage and part-time resident of the Colorado resort town. “Even when you’re with the most impressive and important people at an event or conference, it doesn’t feel like networking—or work really.”
Aspen’s mountains first called to Rubio when she was invited to speak at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference there. “I was thinking, Why Aspen?” she recalls. She attended, and the reason instantly crystallized: “space, clarity, and a deeper connection to nature,” she says. A few years later, in 2019, she and her then-fiancé Stewart Butterfield—cofounder of Flickr and Slack—returned, craving more of those wonderful things that made Aspen a place to think and breathe. They purchased a home in town and, a few months later, held their wedding ceremony at the top of Snowmass Mountain.
Today, as a co-chair of the annual Aspen Art Museum fundraiser ArtCrush, Rubio has been instrumental in bringing robust new programming and consequential artists—including Glenn Ligon and Matthew Barney—to her new Colorado home.
Rubio, who was born in the Philippines and raised in New Jersey, didn’t grow up around art, but her life experiences have instilled in her a great appreciation for it. She has amassed a wide range of works—including pieces by Dutch Old Masters, contemporary painters like Salman Toor and Louis Fratino, and surrealists like Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning—as well as objets d’art such as a collection of jewelry boxes that spans the medieval period to present day. What’s equally impressive is her unpretentious and democratic approach to collecting: She lingers on the soul of a piece rather than its sticker price, a quality that connects her to other Aspen collectors, many of whom share her low-key attitude.
“The caliber of art you see in people’s homes here is unrivaled,” she says, recalling a show at the Aspen Art Museum a few years ago that featured works by Anish Kapoor, Kerry James Marshall, and Robert Gober—all on loan from local collectors. “The works were something you’d expect to see at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but it was all from Aspen. People here really live with their art in their house, so it feels very meaningful and intimate.”
While Rubio and her family now shuttle between Manhattan, the Hamptons, Aspen, and a ranch in New Mexico, it is first and foremost the Colorado town that cultivates something unique inside her. “Aspen has a way of stripping things back to what matters,” she says. “Whether I’m thinking through a creative project, building a new venture, or simply exploring what’s next, I find that Aspen helps me connect the dots in a different way. It’s a place where I can be both expansive and grounded.”
Everyone has a secret. For Edoardo Zegna, it’s his paintings—pieces only his wife has seen. “It takes a lot to put your most raw and visceral emotion on a piece of canvas and then share it,” says Edoardo, the scion of Italy’s Zegna textile and fashion empire.
Edoardo was raised in an art-steeped household; his childhood home even included a room filled with Ansel Adams photographs of aspen trees. That was an early foreshadowing to the place that has become central to his adult life: He now decamps to Aspen for Christmas and summer during his children’s school breaks. “It’s like an embrace,” he says.
Along with art, nature has been a passion for every generation of the Zegna lineage. A century ago, Edoardo’s great-grandfather, company founder Ermenegildo Zegna, established his wool mill amid the densely forested Biellese Alps in Trivero, Italy. It was more than a workshop: Ermenegildo was committed to weaving something meaningful into the fabric of his new company. Thus, he began commissioning local artists, a family practice that still endures today: One of the company’s earliest art collaborators was Ettore Pistoletto Olivero, whose now 92-year-old son, Michelangelo Pistoletto, a Nobel Prize candidate, currently works with the family through its charitable Zegna Foundation. “He has seen this all come to life,” Edoardo says.
Established in 2000, the Zegna Foundation supports environmental conservation and education in arts and culture around the world—including in Aspen. Last summer, the foundation sponsored ArtCrush with a gala dinner at the Aspen Art Museum, and its Oasi Zegna Global Initiatives launched an ambitious reforestation and forest protection plan in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and the Aspen Fire Department. Last spring, Zegna also announced a collaboration with the international art fair giant Art Basel.
For his part, Edoardo has collected art since he was an undergraduate at Georgetown University. “My dearest pieces are the pieces that maybe have absolutely no market value,” he says. “It gives me pleasure. It brings me back to when I bought it, and what that moment was, and who I was.”
That memory connection comes full circle in Aspen, a place that felt familiar to Edoardo even on his first visit—a sensory recollection no doubt explained by those Ansel Adams pieces on the walls of his childhood home. But these days, those aspen trees aren’t just art; they’re reminders of the fragile Aspen ecosystem he and his family seek to preserve. “How beautiful is an aspen tree as a whole?” he says. “Mind-blowing.”
When Amber Glenn talks about Colorado, her voice shifts—lighter, almost as if she’s pulling the mountain air straight into her lungs. For the figure skater, the state is more than a training base; it’s a landscape that’s shaped her.
Three years ago, Glenn packed up her life in Plano, Texas, and drove north. She’d been chasing skating dreams since she was 5, but Colorado offered something Texas couldn’t: Olympic-level ice, altitude, and a view that made her stop mid-glide. “There was one moment I remember as a kid coming here for competitions,” Glenn says. “I looked out the rink windows and saw the mountain lit up in the morning light. I was just in awe.”
Now, these mountains greet her daily. They’ve become a kind of silent coach—towering, steady, and impossible to ignore. “I moved to Colorado for skating” she says. “But I’ve also found a way of life that makes me better in more ways than I expected.”
Her days are a mix of discipline and neighborly ease. There’s the grind—intense hours on the ice with coaches Damon Allen and Tammy Gambill—and then the pockets of calm: dog walks with her Schipperke, Ukkima, and coffee on her porch while watching the snow gently fall.
That balance has seeped into her skating too. Long known as a technical achiever, Glenn has embraced artistry in Colorado.
“Before, I was definitely more of a strength and powerhouse,” she says. “Now, when I skate, it’s about feeling something.”
It shows. Glenn landed a competition triple Axel in 2023 and claimed the Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final title last year, the first American woman in over a decade to do so. And she’s found a powerful voice, speaking openly about being a part of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as her challenges with ADHD and anxiety. “I want young skaters to see that struggling doesn’t mean you can’t succeed,” she says.
When her training schedule allows, Glenn heads for the high country of Aspen. “There’s this energy there—glamorous but also peaceful, if you know where to look,” she says. That often means an unhurried afternoon wandering Explore Booksellers, a Victorian house turned literary landmark.
This winter, Glenn is aiming for her biggest stage yet: the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina. And she’s doing so with a new approach learned from her move to the mountains. “I used to think pushing harder was the only way,” she says. “Now I understand it’s about knowing when to push and when to breathe.”
South of Aspen, in another beloved mountain town, Madeline Hotel & Residences, Auberge Collection’s new Crest Club is rewriting Telluride’s après playbook.
Perched at 9,545 feet above sea level, the new Crest Club at Madeline Hotel & Residences, Auberge Collection is quietly redefining the notion of ski-in/ski-out. The French-chalet-style members-only retreat is the most exclusive private ski club in the Rockies—and a first for Telluride.
Designed by Rose Ink Workshop, chic interiors reimagine the classic stübe aesthetic through a distinctly Telluride lens, with moody marble and blackened steel fireplaces, vintage-inspired furnishings, and botanical flourishes that feel as though an alpine trail has meandered indoors for a well-earned rest. At the club’s heart is the Falcon Room, a jewel-box bar and cocktail lounge where members gather over bespoke libations and explore an extensive spirits library that includes rare bottles such as Pappy Van Winkle and a single-vineyard Cognac from 1972.
The experience starts even before members click into their skis. A suite of peak perks includes year-round valet parking, private lockers with boot and glove dryers, the option of heli-skiing adventures, and coveted first tracks on untouched trails—all proving that the pinnacle of Telluride may no longer be the summit of Palmyra Peak. It’s waiting at the base at Crest Club.
