Interview with British Beauty Queen Trinny Woodall of Trinny London
The famous UK fashionista from What Not to Wear, Trinny Woodall, experienced makeovers on thousands of women around the world. Her vast understanding of what women want and need was the catalyst that started her Trinny London beauty brand online in 2017. Five years later with a staff of 200 and over a million devoted followers, Trinny is touring with her team to spread the message to “Be Your Best” to her eager Trinny Tribes in Toronto and New York.
I was fortunate to be invited for a mini spa and makeup experience and have a chat with Woodall at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto.
Trinny London The Brand
Trinny London launches her skincare brand in February 2022. After extensively working with her UK lab Trinny made sure her high-quality skincare ingredients geared towards women 40+ keep your skin healthy and radiant, naturally.
Trinny London makeup products are made in Italy, don’t contain harmful synthetic or chemical ingredients, are oil-free, and are not tested on animals.
Shop Trinny London products here: www.trinnylondon.com/ca
Instagram: @trinnylondon
INTERVIEW
WORLDLY EXPERIENCE
“I did UK filming for the BBC for years. I’ve done makeovers on so many women around the world. I went to 12 countries from India to Israel to the US to Australia, Poland, and Scandinavia. All these conversations I’ve had with all these women for me was research into why women find it difficult to buy makeup.”
ABOUT BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR
“I knew that I would do it one day and then the time came at the most difficult time of my life. Everything was against me. I was 51, and I was no longer with my partner. The father of my daughter had died. I wasn’t earning any money so I had to mortgage the house and then ultimately sell it. It was the worst time but also it was a time when I thought if I don’t start now I’ll never start.”
A SIMPLIFIED WAY TO DISCOVER YOUR BEST MAKEUP LOOK
“There’s got to be a way in which there could be a formula that you could find makeup that suits women easily and make it easy to apply. So I thought how can I make it really easy for women to know what makeup they suit and also what is the easiest makeup to put on? I wanted to build a brand to give women portable stackable, easy-to-use products. So it started with makeup.”
REAL MAKEUP FOR REAL PEOPLE
“I’d spent many years feeling excluded perhaps because of malvertising. I didn’t want to see an ad of an 18-year-old selling me cream as a 40-year-old. It just didn’t make sense.
There is a tremendous amount of airbrushing in the industry. There’s a tremendous amount of hiding the flaws. When we launched five years ago we only did touching up on a post edit if some makeup had dropped but not because we don’t like your eye so let’s change the shape. We don’t do that.
For the majority of the first four years of our life as a brand, on our feed and on our site, we use real women. We have 180 women on the site from ebony to alabaster, from the age of 18 to 83. We are definitely really thinking about that woman 35+ but we don’t want anyone to feel excluded.”
SKINCARE HAS A ROUTINE
“I had acne from ages 13 to 30 and I think when you have acne-prone skin you’re more obsessive to find and try ranges. So at the age of 17, I went to Lord & Taylor in New York, and I discovered Clinique. That’s when I realized ‘Oh my God, skincare has a routine!’ Clinique was the first to say cleanse, tone, and moisturize. My mother before had given me Ponds cream for my spots, she had no idea. She never had bad skin.”
TRIALS AND KNOWLEDGE
“I probably tried about 500 brands over 30 years and I tried them as a routine for a couple of months. I knew which ones were all marketing chat didn’t have the right ingredient formations or which ones had great ingredients but maybe they were irresponsible in their ingredients.
We have about half a million women who follow my live skincare Q&A on Wednesdays with a really diverse set of knowledge. They ask “do I put my SPF on after a vitamin C” to “is copper amino isolate good if you have spots?”
THE SCIENCE OF SKINCARE
“I thought if I’m doing skincare, I want great ingredients. We really research with labs that are creating new ingredients. We have our own skincare lab in the UK creating those formulations.
We start with a retinol or an acid and then we see who its supporting act is. Retinols don’t really go with Vitamin C so you never really put them together. If you see a product with it together, it means that both of them are quite inert. Peptides and hyaluronic acid play well together. Peptides will be friends with nearly everybody so will hyaluronic acid which is literally a hydrator. When you’re dealing with serums and acids you should never add fragrance. Vitamin C ingredients don’t like fragrance because it could compromise the integrity of that formulation.
It’s all about ‘does it clean your skin properly? does it hydrate your skin properly?’ So, a lot of work has gone into our skincare.”
