In conversation
As she releases her new book, Fearless, Trinny Woodall talks to Bethan Rose Jenkins about being a control freak, her midlife reinvention and embracing being single again
Photography JOSEPH MONTEZINOS
Trinny Woodall is one of Britain’s best-known stylists and a perennial fashion guru. Now also the face of her own beauty brand, you might expect she’d feel pressure to look ‘perfect’ all the time. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. ‘I don’t give a monkeys,’ Trinny says, laughing. ‘I do live streams on social media, where 300,000 people see me with no makeup on.’
For someone who has spent decades in the public eye, Trinny, 59, is refreshingly down to earth. While she rose to fame alongside Susannah Constantine on the iconic BBC makeover show, What Not To Wear, she has more recently become synonymous with her makeup and skincare brand, Trinny London. Founded in 2017, it has become a multimillion-pound business with a cult following.
‘Skincare was always one of my obsessions,’ she says, recalling her TV days. ‘I had acne and became obsessed about what I could do to make it better, trying all sorts of treatments. Whereas Susannah would drink and smoke and go to sleep with her makeup on and wake up with skin like a baby’s bottom. She found it hilarious. Then at 50, she called me up and went, “What has happened to my face? Tell me what to do!”’
When we meet on the GH photoshoot, Trinny is in CEO mode, adding styling details as she switches outfits and often going over to the monitor to check each shot alongside the photographer. ‘I am such a control freak,’ she admits, as we find a quiet corner to chat.
BUILDING A BEAUTY BUSINESS
Trinny puts her metamorphosis from TV presenter and stylist to formidable businesswoman down to hard graft and determination. When their time presenting What Not To Wear came to an end, Trinny and Susannah created a small budget makeover show in Belgium, Trinny & Susannah’s Makeover Mission, which was sold to eight countries worldwide, and meant regularly travelling to far-flung places.
‘Susannah and I went from being paid well and having a BBC One TV show, to getting on a plane constantly. It was three years of exhaustion. But we both had mortgages to pay and it taught me a lot, which then helped me with Trinny London,’ she says. When travelling, Trinny would transfer her own makeup concoctions into pots, which she could stack together for easy transportation. It was this concept that became the famous ‘makeup stacks’ that launched Trinny London.
Building a business didn’t come without hurdles, however. For starters, Trinny made the agonisi
