Image©Rex Features
Posh bossy boots Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine have made their name turning frumps into gorgeous girls. Their mantra is to help women “to dress in a way that gives them the confidence to feel better about themselves”.
And they’ve got a hell of a lot of experience doing it. Susannah worked for the likes of John Galliano before the duo began writing a fashion column for the Daily Telegraph yonks ago. And while they’re best known for presenting the style makeover show What Not To Wear, they’ve since launched Trinny & Susannah Undress on ITV and will soon be back on our screens with Trinny & Susannah Undress The Nation.
We talk to the duo about their fashion loves, hates and projects – and find them rather adept at steering the conversation.
Let’s talk about your new show Trinny & Susannah Undress The Nation, that sounds like quite a....
Trinny: No darling, let’s not talk about that because that’s so far away at the end of November. Let’s talk about our new book instead.
...challenge? Ok... Tell us about your new book.
Trinny: Well, it’s called The Body Shape Bible, and it’s basically the ultimate reference of everything we’ve done over the past 13 years while working together. With this book we’ve combined body forms to create new shapes and we show examples of how to dress to re-proportion the body, to make a woman’s figure look perfect. You read this book and it’s like you’ve got us by your side, holding your hand and explaining what to do.
In the book, Trinny and Susannah have created 12 new body shapes in addition to the traditional hourglass, the pear and the apple. Among them are the lollipop, the vase, the cornet and the skittle. And the rather less flattering, ‘brick’.
Trinny: But you know, Kate Moss is a brick and Judy Dench is a brick. It just means that you don’t have a waist and you don’t have a bottom and the best way to describe that is a brick.
Our style icons are people who dress for their body shape. Today, teenage girls are influenced by so many inappropriate role models and I think that magazines send out such mixed messages. One week the role model is too thin, the next too fat and it gives an unnecessary pressure to a teenager.
We’ve mentioned role models [in the book] who we feel aren’t abusing their bodies. They all dress really great for their shape, whether it’s Judi Dench or Claudia Schiffer. She’s an iconic model but you know, she has boobs and she has an arse.
We also wanted to show women who are not slaves to fashion. They can get it wrong too, so we’ve illustrated where they get it wrong and where they get it right. There is this obsession with us all having to be perfect which puts such huge pressure on women and it’s very wrong. So that’s why it was so important for us to create these new models where women can really celebrate their shape.
Susannah: “And we’ve just always, always, always listened to our audience and followed them. We’re very open to comments from the viewers, our readers, the people who come up to us in the street. They are our voice, the ones who give us the ideas.”
Is this whole size zero phenomena a big problem at the moment?
Trinny: Well, you know size zero, size shmeero. There have been thin models on the catwalks since time immemorial – but they’re models, they’re not celebrities. Nicole Richie (when she was very, very skinny) was not a good role model. But with models, the majority of them are freaks of nature, you know? That’s just the way they are. And most of them stuff their faces with McDonalds and they’re very young. When people are young they’re a very different shape from when they’re fully developed with all their hormones.
Image©Rex Features
What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received?
Trinny: The best advice that we’ve both been given is don’t be slaves to fashion. There is no need to follow the height of fashion all your life. Dress for your shape and dress for yourself. If you walk out of the door feeling happy in what you’re wearing, it doesn’t matter what it looks like, just go ahead and wear it.
Do you feel pressurized to always look great in public because of your work?
Susannah: Yes, I think there is a pressure for us to look good. Certainly when we’re out and about, we do always think about it. But even if it’s going out in scruffy sweatpants, they would still be sweatpants that suit our shape. They’d be wide-legged (and wide-banded about the tummy in my case) worn with a nice cashmere sweater or something. We’re conscious of it but we do have the luxury of turning it off, because we know that we can always turn it on again when we have to. We understand our bodies very well, so everything in our wardrobe suits our shape.
Would you ever consider having surgery?
Susannah: Oh god, EVERYTHING please!
Trinny: For us, you don’t need surgery to change your shape, you need a great black coat with one button, a great dress that sucks in and gives you a waist. That’s something that we feel very passionate about: that you wear clothes that do things for you, but you’re not a slave to fashion who wears skinny jeans because all of your girlfriends are. If you’re bottom heavy, don’t wear skinny jeans girls, because you’re going to look bigger. Really just try and be individual in your thought and look at what suits you.
Do you think you need certain qualities to give good fashion advice?
Trinny: I think you do, yes. Susannah comes from a background in clothing, she’s worked with Galliano and she has a great knowledge of the cut of cloth and how garments are made. Together over 13 years we have developed that knowledge and I think that definitely, more than anyone in the country, we’d know how to dress a woman’s body shape, because we must have dressed more than 5,000 women. And every single day we come across new women and we learn something new.
Susannah: And we care. We are really passionate about how the ordinary woman in the street dresses and about how she feels. And I don’t think there’s any other professional journalist or style writer that has that same empathy and passion that we do.
Image©Rex Features
Style travesties. Britney’s been a bit of one of late, but who would you say is the biggest?
Trinny: I think Britney is a very good example. We were just thinking how much we’d like to work with her, because she’s such a good illustration of somebody who is showing their unhappiness by how they’re dressing. You can see she’s just not respecting her body in any way and those are the people we really want to help because there is an emotional empathy as well.
What makes you happy?
Trinny: Reading bedtime stories to my daughter. Making a little Lyla sandwich between myself and my husband [Johnny Elichaoff] and my stepson Zak and just all lying in bed together chilling. That makes me happy.
Susannah: Sex, drugs, rock and roll!
And what would be your biggest fear?
Susannah: I think my biggest fear would be for Trinny Woodhall to walk out of her front door wearing a pair of skinny jeans. That’s my greatest fear.
*Trinny and Susannah have just launched a new clothing line through Littlewoods Direct. See it here.
More useful links and information
Are you wearing the right bra size?
We're made over by Bobbi Brown for Richard & Judy
Is this new treatment better than Botox?
