Lights, camera Action
Lucy Slight gets a front-row seat to watch Trinny Woodall get ready
IT’S 8 O’CLOCK AT NIGHT NZ time and, over in London, Trinny Woodall may have just woken up. She joins me on Zoom from the well-lit closet that I recognise from her Youtube channel, and in the background hangs a selection of colourful clothing, hangers evenly spaced.
Trinny is wearing a sparkling sequin top and her hair looks done in an effortlessly undone way, but I’m surprised to find she’s not wearing a scratch of makeup.
What I’m assuming will be a 20-minute interview about the launch of Trinny London’s online store in New Zealand and perhaps some discussion around why she resonates so deeply with women around the world, quickly turns into a skincare routine deep dive. She’s talking a mile a minute and asking me to play along at home with the selection of Trinny London products I’d been sent prior to the interview. I have never, in all my years interviewing people in the beauty industry, heard anyone speak so passionately about skincare.
She starts off by applying an acid exfoliant, which is an unusual product to use in the morning, and quite honestly, usually a big no-no. But Trinny insists, and who am I to argue with a 58-year-old woman with skin as glowing as Trinny’s? The product is Trinny London Tip Toe In PHA Exfoliant, which she says “heals as it exfoliates.” Then she goes in with her Plump Up Peptide HA Serum.
“It has six incredible peptides,” she says. “The peptides work on the amino acids, those little blockchains that actually help to support production of collagen and elastin, so it’s in terms of firmness and elasticity, it’s the
mothership.” In consumer trials, she tells me, the product produced a 105 per cent increase in skin hydration, 63 per cent increase in skin firmness and 64 per cent increase in elasticity.
It seems that Trinny London skincare does not muck around, and neither does Trinny. Within just four years of launching in 2017 with a range of makeup products, Forbes reported that the company was worth US$250 million and is one of Europe’s fastest growing directto-consumer startups.
It was four years after the launch of Trinny London makeup that the brand delved into the complex world of skincare earlier this year, with the release of two cleansers. “It takes a very long time to develop skincare, and I’m quite obsessive about skincare,” she says. Each month following the launch of the cleansers, Trinny London dropped a new product — cleverly, in the order of application — and spent the following weeks educating followers, her ‘Trinny Tribe,’ about how each of the products worked and how to incorporate them into their routines.
If there’s one thing that’s evident about Trinny from the outset, it’s that she’s committed, above all else, to making her fans feel comfortable in their own skin, whether that’s through their beauty regimen or their wardrobe choices. The latter is how she shot to fame in the first place, showing women around the world ‘What Not To Wear’ through her hit 2000’s BBC television series with co-host Susannah Constantine.
Her target audience is women in their 50s and 60s, those who she says are often ignored in the beauty market, but Trinny speaks directly to her fans every day. Answering questions, solving dilemmas and creating a sense of community amongst her 1.1 million Instagram followers and 370,000-strong Youtube channel is a regular feature of Trinny’s social media content. Although her Trinny London online store has only just launched its offering in NZ dollars here, she says Kiwi women already make up a huge percentage of the brand’s customer base. “Around 4 per cent of our customers are from New Zealand, and around 20 percent from Australia. We’re big in that belt of the world,” she says. “Proportionately we have quite a high number of New Zealand customers for being a UK brand.” If you’re wondering what else Trinny uses on her skin, I can confirm she took me right through her routine while chatting away passionately about ingredients (she’s not wrong about being obsessive about skincare). After the hyaluronic acid serum came the Boost Up vitamin C serum followed by BFF — a skin perfecting cream which she says is a great base for anyone looking to create a more even skintone, or perhaps venture into the world of foundation for the first time. At night, she religiously uses her Overnight Sensation Retinal Serum (she’s been using retinol in some form or other for 40 years, she tells me, after first being prescribed it as an acneic 16 year old) before a final layer of Bounce Back Intense Peptide Moisturiser. At the end of our Zoom, I think I’ve applied as much product to the backs of my hands as Trinny has doing her morning routine in front of me.
As we disconnect the call, there is no doubt in my mind that I am going to bed tonight smelling exactly like Trinny Woodall. And I don’t mind it one bit.