“I Know Who I Am”

BEAUTY

BY FELICITY ROBINSON

On the sunny November morning I meet Trinny Woodall, I’m sporting an enormous pimple on my cheek and a mild seasonal hangover. Trinny, on the other hand, is radiant in a full-length silver Saks Potts dress, sculptural No. 21 shoes and a long neon necklace by Liat Ginzburg. The contrast couldn’t be more apparent but – Trinny being Trinny – she’s all compliments, flattering me in the best kind of throwaway manner.

My skin is “peaches and cream”, she offers at one point in our conversation; my cool-blonde hair will go a good grey as I age, whereas hers is “a shitty, slightly warm grey, like the tail of a fox”. I very much doubt that, but I’m grateful nevertheless – this generous, self-deprecating attitude being just one of the reasons she’s so universally loved. Many of us have grown up with Trinny. For a while in the 2000s, she seemed to be everywhere on TV and in newspapers as the host of What Not To Wear, alongside her equally plummy journalist mate, Susannah Constantine.

Now, as the founder of make-up and skincare brand Trinny London, Trinny has amassed legions more followers – her so-called Trinny Tribes – who tune in several times a day to her social media posts for style and beauty advice. She’s as direct as ever, but she has softened, too

"I don’t feel I’m an older woman, I feel I’m just at midlife. I mean, I’m going to be 60 soon. And I think, could I live to 120?."

– Trinny Woodall

Trinny doesn’t see a point at which she’ll just stop having tweakments, or dying her hair. “I don’t think in terms of stopping anything,” she says. “When I look in the mirror, I think, ‘Do I look full of energy, do I look alive? Do I feel that I can do whatever I want to do today? And I will do what it takes to [achieve] that. So it’s what I feed myself, the make-up I put on, it’s the treatment I have, it’s the Botox.”

In her book, Fearless, Trinny devotes the entire first section to instruction on how to identify the colours that suit you, which sounds very 1980s but is actually revelatory, particularly as it stops you from buying unnecessary make-up based on just liking the colour and then finding it looks shocking on your face (just me?).

Meet The Women Making Thousands From Their Wardrobes

BY CAROLINE ZIELINSKI

Read more about Trinny Woodall's refreshing approach to ageing – and life at PRIMER.

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