Candy Couture

In 2001, she opened Dylan’s Candy Bar (dylanscandybar.com), a candy Mecca of sweets, fashion, and pop cultural art for the sweet-toothed and easily nostalgic. Now with five locations and the additions of a third floor and 5,000 square feet to the flagship store, Dylan’s Candy Bar is the world’s largest candy shop and a must-see tourist destination for people from all over the globe.

The heiress to the Ralph Lauren brand—a net worth of about $4.6 billion—easily could have fallen into her father’s business or lived the unrestrained lifestyle of a New York socialite. However, she says, “Becoming an entrepreneur was important to me. I wanted to do my own thing.” While she learned a lot watching her father design clothes when she was young, she concluded that “fashion is not my passion.” Candy, on the other hand, is her raison d’être. She didn’t want to just wear the color swatches in her father’s office—she wanted to eat them. “I love colors,” she says, “and the colors of candy are very cheerful, fun, and pop. People think it’s just candy or just chocolate, but I see gummy bears and chocolate sculptures as artistic molds and shapes.”

An unforgettable fifth birthday party viewing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory led Lauren to begin collecting candy wrappers during her travels. Later, as an art history student at Duke University, she made mosaic tables out of gumballs. After college, Lauren launched an event planning company, where she created invitations, centerpieces, and favor bags. “But I kept coming back to using candy as the decorations,” she says. Lauren decided that while she enjoyed event planning, she wanted a permanent venue to do it in. “With Dylan’s Candy Bar, I have the space to showcase artists’ work, provide a party room for kids, adults, and corporations, and make candy the centerpiece of it all.”

That space is sweetly filled with giant lollipop trees and candy buttons, a larger-than-life chocolate bunny, gumdrop ceilings, gumball tables, kaleidoscopic walls of oversized stripes and candy wallpaper, and floor-to-ceiling displays of all the domestic and international goodies one can fathom and more. The café serves decadent desserts, more than 300 ice cream flavors, and adults-only lemon drop and chocolate martinis to patrons sitting on peppermint stools.

It is no wonder the average customer spends 45 minutes in Dylan’s. The candy store evokes the same sentiments as being a 5-year-old walking through Disney World for the first time—wide-eyed, awestruck, and feeling overwhelmed and slightly dizzy, much like a sugar high. The candy connoisseur draws her inspirations from movies like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story, as well as Steven Spielberg films, pop art galleries, and even Janet and Michael Jackson concerts (“the set designs and costumes were so original”).

From the wall of PEZ dispensers and the “baby boomers” candy aisle, to “candies from around the world,” the shop appeals to customers as diverse as the selections. “There are so many different kinds of candies for the different age groups. You just don’t give kids dark chocolate or chocolate-covered nuts—that’s a very sophisticated palate for them. Children love colors, and adults are attracted to things that remind them of their childhood. There’s even sugar-free candy for the grandparents,” Lauren explains.

And let’s not forget celebrities are candy fiends, too. According to Lauren, Madonna is a Hot Tamales kind of gal while the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez is a Shock Tart man. Recently, Michelle Obama bought candy clothing and lollipops for her daughters, and Oprah beelined for the nostalgic PEZ and caramels when she visited the store.

Of course, there were skeptics of the confectionery emporium in the beginning. “The majority of people in business didn’t understand how all that space—two stories worth—was going to be used to sell candy,” says Lauren. “They were like, ‘How are you going to pay the rent just by selling candy?’”

But Lauren knew exactly how to make candy anything but pedestrian. Like her father, who revolutionized the tie and created a lifestyle brand based on preppy polo players, rugged cowboys, and old-money prestige, she is building a candy culture at Dylan’s. “I always admire people like Oprah, Walt Disney, and my dad, who started their own lifestyle brand. I felt that no one has tapped more into the candy industry than just selling it. Many candy companies just roll out mass products and nothing more. I am selling candy as gifts, soaps, pillows, T-shirts, tote bags, and jewelry. Add the party room and café, now you’re seeing how it’s profitable. The business people see that now.”

Asked who were first-time believers, Lauren says her parents. “My dad always understood it was going to be a lifestyle store because he is very visionary like me. My mom also understood that the candy culture is all over the world. Everybody loves candy.”

Though Dylan’s Candy Bar is successfully operating its ninth year, this avant-garde CEO is not one to take a backseat as her candy land continues to unfold. “I am very involved and hands-on because it’s my name on the door. It’s fun for me to design a fantasyland people can escape to.”

Lauren is literally like a kid in a candy shop when she goes to the office, which is just a few blocks away from the store. “I spend a lot of time sampling our products or designing packaging for new products. I work with our graphic designers on new T-shirts, accessories, tote bags, coffee cups, etc. I’m also testing out new martinis for our bar with the café consultant.”

So just how much candy does the candy queen consume each day? “I have three different snacks that are 100 calories each,” she says matter-of-factly. “I went for one week without candy when I was doing this detox. The cleansing ended when I ate two Cinnabons at the airport.”

When Lauren is not experimenting at headquarters, she is showcasing Dylan’s Candy Bar at events, traveling plenty to Los Angeles and London to scope out future stores, and co-hosting charity events for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society. Between TV appearances on talk shows, Lauren is also on tour for her first book, Dylan’s Candy Bar: Unwrap Your Sweet Life, a photo-driven coffee-table collector’s item spilling with confectionary ideas for all occasions, plus the histories  behind the iconic candies of different holidays.

With profitable stores in Manhattan, East Hampton, Garden City, Orlando, and Houston, as well as products in Yankee stadium and selected luxury retailers like Neiman Marcus and the W Hotel, Lauren declares candy is “recession proof.” She also wages the success of her store by, what else, pop culture. “Millions of tourists put us on their list of the top five places to visit. And Dylan’s been the backdrop for shows like Gossip Girl and Keeping up with the Kardashians.” Not to mention, Lauren has recently been immortalized as a Barbie doll that dons a gown inspired by lollipop trees, naturally.

Through future partnerships and international expansion in the works, the CEO of Dylans’ Candy Bar is reigning in the niche candy and entrepreneurial worlds. Lauren took the road-more-difficult when she forged a career path separate from her famous father, but—we’re not going to sugarcoat it—she is living a sweet life of her own.