The secret to eternal youth? Breathe in

The septuagenarian founder of ESPA still tots up 70 flights a year and puts in 16-hour days. She thinks cosmetic surgery is ‘madness’, so how does she do it, asks Ellie Pithers

Susan Harmsworth is 70, but you wouldn’t know it. “I don’t look anything like my age, thank God, and I don’t act like it either,” she trills in typically fabulous fashion. She is, I can confirm, quite right: her skin is as smooth, her hair as luxuriant, her clothes as glamorous and her chatter as quickfire as any woman half her age. Such youthfulness befits the founder and chairman of a wildly successful luxury spa brand. It can, however, occasionally backfire: Harmsworth is currently locked in negotiations with Her Majesty’s Passport Office, who won’t believe that the photographs she has sent in with an application for a new passport are actually of her.

“I filled the pages of my passport in a year and a half,” she sighs. “I was in Doha last week and Dubai the week before; I go to Saudi, Russia, China, India, America – my life is on a plane. Anyway, they sent me a letter saying ‘We need a letter to prove that you travel a lot’ when I applied for a new one. I felt like telling them to just look in the bloody passport.”

HM Passport Office has made a mistake in crossing Harmsworth. Hers is the direct manner and unrelenting enthusiasm of a woman who always gets her way. “I’m quite a strong personality, but at the same time I’m not aggressive,” she says. “I’m an Aries: I’m constantly driven and the passion hasn’t gone.” Twenty-three years after Harmsworth founded her business, ESPA, she runs 500 spas in more than 55 countries at top hotel groups, such as the Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons and RitzCarlton. ESPA trains 5,000 postgraduate therapists every year, and employs around 300 people inhouse, including her sons Michael, the CEO, and Charlie, who is an executive on the branding side. Then there’s the ESPA line of skincare and spa products, made in Somerset by an inhouse team of chemists and, she is keen to point out, all Fairtrade, Soil Association and Ecocert-approved.

It sounds exhausting. “I do work like a dog,” she agrees. “But I’m not married and my kids are grown up, so although I work hard I can balance my life for me now.” Harmsworth grew up in Surrey, guided by a triumvirate of strong women: her granny, Nell, a herbalist and plantlover; her mother, Ellen, a paediatric nurse; and her aunt, Mary, the head of German at the University of London and an authority on Goethe and Thomas Mann. Luckily her father, in the company of such Amazons, was a great believer in “female empowerment”. He founded a successful construction company from scratch, and Harmsworth credits him with the entrepreneurial streak that emerged after she left Kingston Polytechnic with a business qualification.

It was Swinging Sixties London, and Harmsworth was in the thick of it, taking a job at Vogue as a beauty writer before marrying Vidal Sassoon’s right-hand man, Malcolm Smith, and heading to New York to set up a new Sassoon outpost.

Harmsworth was a Biba girl and amassed a wardrobe of slightly eccentric clothes. (If she’s hesitant about discussing her first husband, whom she divorced in 1979, it’s because he gave away all her Ossie Clark dresses after they split. “Celia Birtwell’s prints in particular were so beautiful. I nearly killed him,” she laughs.)

In 1969, the Harmsworths moved from New York to Toronto. Bored, with two small children and “absolutely nothing to do”, the 25-year-old entrepreneur decided to open a salon. “It was called something ghastly like The Niche!” she roars. She brought hairdressers over from London, capitalised on the hordes of well-qualified eastern Europeans resident in the city and by 1974 they had 80 staff on four floors – two for hair, two for beauty – turning over $4 million in cash.

I think developing breath work is very important for stress. That, and learning to think positively

Five years later, Harmsworth got divorced and left Toronto, but continued in the spa vein. She went briefly to France to run a thalassotherapy centre (seawaterbased therapy), then returned to the UK to run health farms, the first of which was the so-called fat farm, Grayshott Hall, in Surrey. “There were three doctors, 14 nurses, and we offered Pilates and yoga, all before anyone had ever heard of them. I added 40 therapists and 40 masseurs alongside the doctors and practitioners.” Her skill lay in persuading them all to work together.

Next, she set up her consultancy business, designing and developing spas. Five years later, she founded ESPA; her natural product line, used in all the spas and available online, was launched the same year. ESPA’s reputation is built on swanky spas that don’t feel too intimidating – they’re luxurious, but fathomably so. It’s a formula that works: Harmsworth won’t release exact turnover figures but they’re in the multimillions.

So how does she do it – all the continent-hopping, spa-designing, product-developing, 16-hour days – and still look good? “Breathing,” she replies. “I know everybody talks about meditation, but I don’t think you’ve got to go into a room and sit and stare at a Buddha. I think developing breath work is very important, whether it’s yoga or tai chi, some form of breathing technique to help you deal with stressful situations. That, and learning to think positively, waking up and thanking whoever for what you’ve got.”

Harmsworth also admits to an annual medical detox, with vitamin infusions and blood tests to check for intolerances, and a personal trainer. Her skincare regime sounds extensive but streamlined – “serums, oils, moisturisers, all layered” – and she doesn’t believe in surgery. “I have not had any work done. I prefer to grow old gracefully.” Hair, however, is crucial. “John Frieda every four to five weeks is a necessity. And blow-dries.”

Travel packing is her forte – she tots up more than 70 flights every year. “Organising your clothes makes a huge difference to the speed of packing. When my kids left home, I converted a bedroom into a fantastic dressing room. My clothes are divided into summer, all linens and silks; business, lots of black and white; and eveningwear.” Suitcase staples include a little black dress, Stephen Webster jewellery, black cigarette trousers and statement jackets from Amanda Wakeley.

Travel outfits are similarly precise. Harmsworth travels in flats and cashmere wraps from the White Company, and wears flight leggings by Noel Asmar. She swears by her noise eliminators, and by her Cloud Nine heated rollers. “Expensive, but worth the outlay.” She combats jetlag with homoeopathic remedies such as Australian Bush Flower Travel Essence, and napping when she can, but she thinks it’s really about a state of mind.

“The other thing I always say is, never be afraid of people. Aggressive people, it’s usually their problem. There’s no good fighting back because it makes them more aggressive.”

Let’s hope HM Passport Office adopts a calm approach.