Want to know the best beauty secrets? Ask granny

As I passed through airport duty-free a few weeks ago, I spied the yellow and white packaging of the perfume Giorgio Beverly Hills. The power fragrance of the Eighties is now incredibly dated, and yet I couldn’t resist a quick spritz.

When the heady floral scent hit me, I was immediately transported back to the Eighties and my Grandma Betty’s flat in Leeds.

Whenever I stayed there, every morning I’d follow my grandmother, then in her early 60s, into her room and perch on the end of her bed. I’d watch transfixed as she sat at her dressing table in a peach silk dressing gown and marabou-trimmed slippers ‘putting her face on’.

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Claire Coleman (pictured left aged two with her grandma, then aged 56 in 1979, and right, together today) says she now looks back on her grandmother's beauty tips as a legacy that has shaped who she is

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Claire (left) aged 7 in 1984 with Grandma Betty, and sister Rebecca

It was an hour-long ritual that started with Dior Capture moisturiser and finished with a liberal spritz of Giorgio. Back then, it seemed the epitome of grown-up glamour, the essence of what it meant to be a woman.

Now, I look back on my grandmother’s beauty tips and tricks with more than just nostalgia. It’s a legacy that’s shaped who I am. After all, we inherit more than just our looks from the influential women in our lives. Without realising it, their attitudes and ideas of femininity subtly become ours — tweaked, of course, to fit us better.

 

Because it’s surely no coincidence that I feel most stylish when I’m wearing — as she did — high heels with oversized sunglasses, a vintage fur coat and a slash of bright lipstick, ensconced in a cloud of Elnett hairspray and a liberal coating of my own power fragrance, Prada’s Amber. A perfume that, I was amused to discover, contains notes of sandalwood and patchouli, just like Giorgio.

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Claire says her grandma Betty, pictured aged 36 in 1959 with her daughter Fiz and son Jonathan, shaped her attitudes and ideas of femininity

It’s not just me. One friend attributes her entire style — her love of a fitted frock, her passion for emerald green, her Thirties hairstyle — to her grandmother.

I always knew Grandma Betty was a glamorous gran, but I think like many women I hadn’t realised quite how much of her wisdom she’d imparted to me over the years.

Whether it’s investing my money in moisturiser rather than cleanser (‘why pay for something you wash down the drain?’), never using soap and water on my face (‘it dries it out’), religiously removing my make-up (‘otherwise you’ll ruin your skin’), keeping my face out of the sun (‘use fake tan instead’), far more of my beauty regime than I realise is inherited from her.

Some might think that ‘putting your face on’, as Grandma would say, is the most superficial of subjects. But our appearance has a huge bearing not only on how the world perceives us, but on how we perceive ourselves. As Grandma Betty puts it: ‘If I don’t look good, I don’t feel good.’ 

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'Grandma Betty was a glamorous gran, but I think like many women I hadn't realised quite how much of her wisdom she'd imparted to me over the years,' Claire says (Betty aged 59, left, and 43, right)

Our beauty regimes don’t define our femininity, though for many of us they are a fundamental part of it. But there’s more to it than that. At a time when we constantly hear statistics about a lonely generation of older women who feel they have little in common with today’s youth, the extraordinary truth is that beauty is one of the only subjects that bridges the generation gap.

While Grandma Betty and I never shared the same taste in music, and my passion for the latest gadgets baffles her almost as much as her devotion to bridge bewilders me, like many women we never fail to find common ground when it comes to cosmetics.

And frankly I’d be a fool not to take advice from her on the subject. At 91, she has the face of a woman 20 years younger and is adamant she wants to keep it that way (when, five years ago, she realised that the side of her face that she slept on was more wrinkled, she began sleeping on her back).

Claire (right) aged 13 in 1990 with Grandma Betty, and sister Rebecca

Born in Leeds in 1923, the eldest of three, Betty left school at 16. She had wanted to study beauty but her father, a teacher, enrolled her at the local college to be an apothecary’s dispenser. ‘I didn’t argue — in those days you didn’t,’ she says.

My memories of her date from a time when, having retired at 61, she could finally embrace her passion for fashion and beauty.

I remember thinking then, as I do now, that her style was flawless. These days she tends to wear dresses with coordinating cardigans that are as likely to be high-end designers like Cerruti, Jaeger or Jitrois as they are to be High Street treasures from Marks & Spencer or Jigsaw.

I’m always delighted to receive her cast-offs. Indeed, her eye for an outfit is probably why, in her 60s, a friend’s son offered her a job selling designer fashions in Hewlett’s, a Harrogate department store, which she accepted with delight. ‘I knew all the girls on the beauty counters and so they’d always be giving me samples of new things to try. And I got a 20 per cent discount at Dior which, to this day, I still love.’

I vividly recall rummaging through her drawers full of blue and gold compacts, my sister and I daubing each other with bronzers and coral-coloured lipsticks. In fact, many of those same lipsticks and bronzers are probably still in use today.

‘You can keep most make-up for years,’ Grandma insists. ‘I’ve got a Dior bronzer that dates back to the mid-80s, and Elizabeth Arden powder and Rimmel eyeshadows I’ve had for decades.’ Now I understand where my cosmetic hoarding habit comes from, I too have drawers full of discontinued cosmetics.

Despite never having worked in sales, she was a natural. ‘I never sold anyone anything they didn’t look fabulous in,’ she boasts.

Her experience means she’s an uncompromising customer — in a way that embarrassed me as a teenager, but now makes me fiercely proud. I remember going puce with embarrassment when she’d drag me into a store while she returned a pair of Wolford tights that had gone saggy.

Mummy knows: The fist archeological evidence of cosmetics stems from ancient Egypt, when castor oil was used used as a balm

Despite living alone since the death of my grandfather four years ago, her standards haven’t slipped. She is the voice of reason in the back of my head, especially when I see a company promising a £200 moisturiser will make me younger.

And barely a week goes by when I don’t get a call from her. Whether she’s asking what I think about a new product — ‘Now, this anti-ageing spray I’ve read about, Filorga? It sounds wonderful, but it’s terribly expensive’ — or telling me about her latest discovery, there’s always a reason to talk.

Discussing perfume recently, I found we shared a mutual love of L’Occitane’s Verveine scent (Giorgio has long since been banished) and so I suggested she try a Dior one I liked, Escale A Portofino — turns out she already had it.

And, on my latest visit, she showed me an ancient Dior lipstick and was lamenting that it had been discontinued.

While I’d always thought that the corals she liked were not my colour, I found myself unearthing my new favourite, Jungle Queen by Lipstick Queen, in a shade that was uncannily close to her Dior.

Some women turn into their mothers. I, it seems, am turning into my grandmother. And I couldn’t be more proud.