‘Women are my life’s work now’
Having refashioned herself as a beauty expert for the social media age, Trinny Woodall has high hopes for 2018
The new year is typically a time for fresh starts – a moment for contemplation and transformation. And it would be fair to say that Trinny Woodall is embracing that spirit of change more than most.
At 53, Trinny, queen of the fashion makeovers, has reinvented herself and, boy, does it suit. Having set her sights on internet domination, she seems well on the way to cracking it: the past 12 months saw her launch a new online cosmetics business and triple her social media audience (328,000 Instagram followers at the last count). In August, a hilarious video of her trying out a £10 firming mask from South Korea went viral after it left her unable to move her face.
There can be little doubt that 2018 will be her year. The Chelsea cottage she moved into in late 2016 has been transformed from quaint London bolt-hole to the nucleus of her brand, Trinny London. The living room is dominated by a Perspex meeting table, piled high with products ready to be sent to shoppers. Young women with notebooks, bouncy hair and pristine make-up walk in and out, looking busy – an army of mini-trinnies.
But turn the corner into a snug area and the feel is more personal. A velvet sofa is surrounded by personal mementos: an engraved silver box, a couple of small oil paintings of women (gifts from her beau, art collector Charles Saatchi, perhaps) and framed photos of her former husband Johnny Elichaoff with their daughter, Lyla. It is the perfect muddle of businesswoman meets fashion guru, TV presenter, social media influencer and mother.
As we sip echinacea tea, I wonder: where on earth does she find the time to tackle it all? As well as her new business, there are the daily Instagram videos of her high-street must-haves and beauty tips, and the seemingly endless replies to her online fan base – dishing out warm but straightforward advice.
“I’m disciplined,” says Trinny. “So, I’ll wake up in the morning early and reply to some. Then, if I’m on the way to a meeting, I reply to some more. There might be 50 to 150 a day; not a huge amount. The audience is really important to me. You are giving information woman to woman.”
Viewers of ITV’S This Morning, on which Trinny is resident style expert, will know that she has lost none of the no-nonsense appeal that helped her shoot to stardom alongside Susannah Constantine in BBC makeover series What Not to Wear, which ended 10 years ago.
The pair became notorious for pinching love handles and grabbing bosoms. And, remarkably, they have kept in touch with a number of the women who featured on the programme. “There’s probably about six who I email or text,” says Trinny, “some who really touched us. I just felt so heartfelt at what they’d gone through and wanted to know they would be OK.” Women, she tells me, are her life’s work. “I know what
‘My clothes won’t do up, as I’ve put on weight from the menopause’
makes them insecure,” says Trinny. “When a woman walks into a room, I know how she feels about herself by the way she dresses and the way she moves.
“I can tell so much by the little things – from how women care for their clothes to how big or small they are on their body, which says a lot about how they feel about their weight. By how they put their make-up on, by the consistency of their skin. I can read women quite well.”
It is this knowledge that she has poured into Trinny London, which launched in October and invites women to complete an online survey before identifying cosmetics to complement their skin, hair and eye tone, all of which come in neat, stackable pots. “I’m building a business based entirely on wanting women to look and feel better,” she explains.
Getting older, Trinny thinks, has mellowed her. “Since I turned 50, I’ve had a real freedom about myself. I was much thinner in my forties – I did tons of Pilates and that made me very taut, which I’m now not underneath this clothing. Right now, I think I’m 11 stone or 11 and a half. My clothes aren’t doing up because I’ve put weight on from the menopause. But I don’t care about things like that. I still think ‘Oh, I should exercise’, but I don’t, really.
“When I was really skinny, some people would say I was quite cold, because I’m actually quite shy. I’ll go into a cocktail party and I’ll sit in the loo for a bit, because I find it very difficult talking to people.”
It is hard to imagine this gregarious woman – who embraces me like an old pal when she sweeps into the room – could be lacking in confidence. But Trinny has spoken openly about the low self-esteem, brought on by chronic acne, that dogged her early years and saw her in rehab for drink and drug addiction by 26. Last autumn saw her mark 27 years sober.
After a string of post-rehab jobs in PR, she met Susannah at a party and, in the mid-nineties, the pair were offered the chance to write a style advice column in this newspaper, making over readers. It led to a TV show, 11 books and a range of “magic” knickers. “I never got used to being flavour of the month,” says Trinny. “I had years when I felt fraudulent and that somebody would find me out. I didn’t feel comfortable. Now, I feel very comfortable and more myself.”
It is hard not to surmise that Saatchi has played a big part in that hard-won comfort. Trinny calls him her “confidant”, adding: “I tell him everything.” What does he think of her turning businesswoman, and how does she answer those who – rather uncharitably – have questioned whether she really has to work as the girlfriend of a multimillionaire?
“Anyone who knows me knows I am not that woman,” she says, slowly. “I want the buck to stop with me.
‘Charles [Saatchi] gives me advice, but I’ll sometimes think “No, I’m not taking it”’
It gives me a sense of personal self. Charles will give me advice, and sometimes I’ll think ‘No, I’m not taking that advice’, and other times I’ll think ‘Well, he’s been tough with me, but I need to take that advice.’
“That’s what a best friend should be able to do – the one person you can take the difficult counselling from, as well as the encouragement. I know he’s really proud of what I set out to do. I know he sees how hard I’ve worked and it makes me feel good. It’s important for my self-worth.”
The pair have been together for four years, since Saatchi’s very public divorce from Nigella Lawson. Trinny divorced her husband, drummer Eliachoff, after a 10-year marriage in 2009, and he tragically killed himself in 2014. She is currently selling the Notting Hill house she purchased after their separation.
“I bought it when we split and I wanted somewhere really nice for Lyla,” she says. “But my life there is not my life today. My exhusband used to come to the house a lot and sometimes you just… it’s a different time.”
She does, she says, “now live with Charles”, before adding: “Well, on and off, really. It’s not an official living together. You know, we go out together and we stay with each other, occasionally.”
Finding love in midlife can be a minefield, with baggage on both sides. How have they navigated it?
“It’s just practical things – like you don’t have any memories from when you were younger together, so it’s a different relationship,” she says. “But then you make memories. Life shouldn’t always be about looking back. My relationship is about today and the future. I’m very much living in the now more than I ever have in my life, because I feel I own my skin the most I ever have.”
Does she mean that she is happy? “Yes, happy is a word I could use right now. Happy and excited. I’ve spent a lot of years worrying about things, and when you live in worry it’s really tough.” Some of that worry was undoubtedly around her daughter, now 14 and who was conceived when Trinny was in her late thirties and after nine gruelling rounds of IVF. Lyla is at boarding school, but the two are very close – “we speak eight times a day and Facetime twice a day” – and during our interview, she calls twice.
Do they talk about her father? “Yes, I do. Whenever Lyla wants to ask me, I will tell her anything,” says Trinny. “That’s how I deal with it. I don’t over mention him, I mention him as much as you would mention anyone.” Has she started to grieve? “Yes, I think I have, but it’s complicated. I don’t really want to go into it.” We return to safer ground. What are her hopes for 2018?
“To grow the business – I don’t know how that’s going to look but we’ve had a really good start. And to nurture Lyla. I feel she’s in a fantastic place. At the weekend, she’s always been stuck to me like a piece of glue but now she’s off forming friendships, which are superseding the importance of me in her life – but she wants to know I am there. So I’m not totally redundant yet.”