The benefit of age is you discover who you are... you don’t worry what people think
TRINNY WOODALL TALKS TO LAUREN TAYLOR ABOUT BOTOX, BUSINESS AND BELIEVING IN YOURSELF
TRINNY Woodall may have just turned 60, but there’s no way she’s going grey.
“Everyone’s entitled to how they want to age – some people might say, ‘Trinny, why do you keep dyeing your hair? You should go grey naturally’. Not in a million years! I have s ***** coloured grey hair, I’m not going to do that. I don’t love grey hair on me.”
Trinny, who rose to fame as one half of presenting duo Trinny and Susannah (Constantine) on the Noughties makeover show, What Not To Wear, and founded beauty empire Trinny London in her 50s, says she’s “more confident” as she enters this new decade – in her skin and herself.
“I feel that I really know who I am. The benefit of age is you really discover who you are. And you don’t worry what people think. In my 20s I definitely didn’t have that selfbelief.
“I found 50 to be quite a freeing decade, and I find this to be an even more freeing decade.”
Although she didn’t feel skin confident until the age of 30, after years of suffering from acne, which was “very debilitating – I tried every single thing for my skin”, it gave her lifelong passion to figure out what works for her.
Trinny launched her brand, targeted at women over 35, with make-up in 2017, followed by skincare in 2022. She posts her routines almost daily for her 1.2 million Instagram followers.
She doesn’t use the phrase ‘antiageing’ (“I’ve got eye wrinkles now and they don’t bother me one bit”) it’s about what suits our skin as we get older. But she is open about the fact she has Botox twice a year, alongside a comprehensive skincare routine.
“I’ve actually never gone to bed without taking my make-up off.
From my 20s, I’ve always had a routine which is sort of three or four steps,” she reveals, although the active ingredients available now go far beyond the three-step Clinique routine Trinny used back in 1979. “As much as I do Botox, you know, I’ve had CO2 laser for my acne scarring, the consistency of my skin is down to ingredients I continually put on my face every day.”
The sheer amount of different active ingredients on the market these days can feel overwhelming, though.
So what’s key for her? “Having a very good mixture of exfoliating acids is crucial. I don’t particularly love glycolic acid because I find it’s a very abrasive acid.
“I love other AHAs [alpha hydroxy acids] like mandelic and malic. Many women come and say,
‘Oh my skin is dry’ and I feel their face and I think, no, you’ve got too many dead skin cells on your skin, there’s a difference.”
Opening up about her morning routine, Trinny reveals “I’m quite into lymphatic drainage of the body”.
She explains: “I do this tapping on my clavicle, on my ear, in my thigh, under my armpit, I rub and I tap 10 times.”
After a cleanser, she puts “on a layer of skincare, clear my lymph [with tapping], then put on a PHA [polyhydroxy acids], a vitamin C, a peptide, then an SPF” – leaving two to three minutes between each – “I want those ingredients to go in”.
In the evenings, Trinny tends to complete her skincare routine over a period of time.
“I get home and do the first bits [of a routine] and then I go and do stuff in the house.
“I’ll do my first acid, then I’ll really let that sink in before I put on a peptide, I’ll brush my teeth, take my supplements, do a couple of emails... I do micro-needling (treatment that uses small needles to cause tiny punctures in the skin to help it renew) every four nights, very gently.”
One of the key things she’s done for her skin, and health in general, is cut down on sugar.
“I just think it’s worse than smoking,” Trinny says. “Things do change when you’re 60, you know what’s going to cause inflammation in your body and you need to avoid it because inflammation leads to many things that are not that pleasant.”
But Trinny is not strict on herself all the time, it seems. She adds: “This weekend I actually relapsed on sugar, I went to the mountains and there was a patisserie and I just went insane.”
■ Trinny Woodall is running an ‘Elevator Pitch’ series on Instagram to give budding female entrepreneurs the chance to pitch their business in 60 seconds, providing tailored feedback in return. See @trinnylondon.
I’m quite into lymphatic drainage of the body so I do this tapping on my clavicle, on my ear, in my thigh, under my armpit... I rub and I tap 10 times...