TRINNY TELLS ALL
Broke, alone and finding Charles
The London street where Trinny Woodall lives is so charming and tranquil – pretty Victorian cottages clad in wisteria, old-fashioned streetlamps − that it is a shock to step through her front door. The place is abuzz: the team masterminding the launch of TRINNY London − her new make-up range − chattering loudly around the dining table, a wall festooned with Post-it notes, tubs of creamy make-up piled on top of one another in the kitchen, and above the fray (literally above, as she is a head taller than anyone else) Trinny, in chunky silver Prada loafers and a Zara frock.
“Ah, I need an office,” she wails, pulling ham from the fridge and spreading cream cheese on crispbreads for lunch (it’s after 2pm), while introducing everyone, showing off her new yellow and silver packaging and talking so fast, it is sometimes hard to keep up.
It is almost as hard to keep up with the shifting fortunes of 53-year-old Trinny’s life in recent years, which saw her TV career dry up, her marriage founder and her fortune disappear after the sudden death of her ex-husband. Early menopause brought on by several rounds of IVF piled on the pressure. Her energy, creativity and determination pulled her through.
“I always have 100 ideas in my head,” she says. “Getting enough sleep is an issue. I manage around five hours a night but I continually wake up my boyfriend.”
Said boyfriend is Charles Saatchi, the well-known art collector (and ex-husband of Nigella Lawson), who has played a key role in Trinny’s renaissance after a low period in which her TV career dried up and her life was touched by tragedy. The couple were introduced at a dinner party four years ago and Charles has since become her business advisor, lover and chief counsellor.
“I was so lucky to meet him,” she admits. “He is my best friend and the person I tell the most to.”
Right now, we are sitting next to the bathroom from which Trinny broadcasts her Instagram and Facebook Live feeds to more than 300,000 followers. Her daily fashion and beauty tips are wise, funny, sometimes wacky but always entertaining. She films herself trying out latest trends (“which some people say aren’t for women over 35 – what rubbish!”) in clothing-store changing rooms.
Back in the bathroom, she has demonstrated everything from dermal rolling (a treatment involving a roller that makes tiny pinpricks in your skin), to $9 lip-plumping masks.
From the outside, her life looks perfect. “The reality is so different,” she reveals.
Indeed, there have been times in the past few years when her back’s been against the wall.
When her career came to a halt, she went from earning six-figure sums to next to nothing. But she is resourceful – “I rented out my own house and rented this [smaller] one instead, and the difference pays the mortgage. I sold off my wardrobe. Yes, I have a lovely holiday and Charles pays, we go out to dinner and Charles pays, but my life is my life. I’ve had periods of real extravagance and times when money has been tight, so I manage.”
Twenty years ago, as a shopaholic-style magpie with an eye for fabric, cut and just the right touch of glamour, she became one half of Trinny and Susannah, the outspoken duo who “made over” frumpy British women in TV’s hugely popular series What Not to Wear. In newspaper columns, they used themselves as models to demonstrate which clothes suited their body shapes. The show ran for five series, and Trinny and Susannah Constantine (55) wrote 11 fashion and style books, selling more than three million copies worldwide.
But when they moved TV networks for a new series,
Trinny & Susannah Undress the Nation, ratings fell and the show was canned. They continued abroad, filming
20 series in nine countries but around three years ago, the game was up – “We were no longer flavour of the month.”
Susannah moved to the country to write a novel, and Trinny set to work on an idea for a high-quality, simple-to-use