Amanda Wakeley: StyleDNA

For the season finale of Style DNA I go on a style journey with the English model, television personality, author and serving Police Constable the glorious Penny Lancaster.

Penny counts herself as incredibly lucky. She had a loving upbringing, her life with husband Rod Stewart has spanned continents, she’s made incredible friendships, become part of an amazing family and embraced motherhood. But it’s not all been plain-sailing. From being relentlessly bullied at school and underestimated because of undiagnosed dyslexia, Penny also experienced a harrowing sexual assault as a young girl. This has made her a staunch campaigner for women’s safety and, these days, she regularly puts in hours as a Special Constable for the City of London Police, where her primary concern is making the streets safe for women. She’s also navigated the challenges of having the weight of the world’s scrutiny thrust upon her in her twenties, undergone IVF treatment, supported her husband through a cancer diagnosis and overcome her own depression as she manoeuvred through menopause. Amongst a heady mix of royalty, rock legends and renegades, her story is one of resilience. 

Penny has recently published a book Someone Like Me,  and in it she tells her full story for the first time, with a natural empathy and humour that she hopes will help others on their own life journey. She shares her wisdom from hard-earned lessons, including “the shame” of a sexual assault,  showing that the key to navigating both storms and sunshine is staying true to you.

Penny is delightfully open about her struggles with her weight over the years…from being “too skinny” as a child, to “not skinny enough” when she started modelling and the lengths she went to to be  “model size”… all the way through to the side effects that several rounds of IVF, 2 pregnancies, lockdown eating and the menopause had on her body… she is still not fully comfortable in her own skin …

Of course I ask her about her life with Rod from how she met him (in a nightclub), to being whisked off to the Bahamas when she was still a student studying photography only to find a wardrobe full of designer clothes on arrival that Rod had personally selected and bought for her (so thoughtful and romantic in my book), to their personal struggles with health (his cancer diagnosis) and their wonderful life as a blended family.

When I ask her how Rod would describe her Style DNA in 3 words she immediately says Sexy Hot Legs… she is just that…and so much more, warm, self-deprecating and hugely grateful for the life that she lives.

I hope you enjoy this conversation. Thank you @penny.lancaster for being such a great guest xx

In this episode of Style DNA I go on a style journey with Maddy Evans, the visionary who has presided over the transformation of M&S womenswear, she is  the Director of M&S Woman, overseeing the womenswear and lingerie categories…no small job. 

I ask Maddy what has been her secret weapon? She tells me that she went through the revamping of Topshop with Jane Shepherdson and it was that experience that gave her the knowledge of how to create change. It was clear at the outset, there was a lot of reliance on history, and a perception of the customer that wasn’t actually true… that she was an older lady who wasn’t interested in style. When she arrived she did a product review with the whole team, some of whom had been at M&S for years, a wonderful and diverse team all wanting to feel stylish, modern and relevant. When she asked them if they would wear anything that they were reviewing no-one put their hand up…there lay the problem.

She knew from the beginning that the 13 million M&S customers, yes extraordinary, trusted M&S for their quality and value but not from a style perspective. So they obviously wanted to protect the value and quality, but with style, so that was the vision. Then it was important to work out what style meant to their customer? It wasn’t leading the trends, but responding to them, and making their customer feel stylish and of the moment. 

We talk about how they wanted to work with people to help change the style perception, hence the Sienna Miller collaboration. As Maddy says Sienna is a woman who has matured in front of the cameras and has had an evolution of style and that resonated with the M&S business and customer. They wanted to work with a woman who understands her style…no better person really.

On a personal note I ask Maddy when she first started to understand clothes…she talks about when you’re very young you want to conform, and she remembers going to school having been asked to take in wedding photos of their parents.  She was looking round at everyones mums in white wedding dresses, and her mum was in a hand crocheted skull cap, a brown floral dress, suede Mary Janes and freshly picked flowers and her dad looked “nothing short of John Lennon”. It was her first realisation that there are different clothing tribes, and that clothes really did something for you…

We talk about the importance of first impressions and how they really count. I ask her whether she ever gets snow blinded by being exposed to so much fashion… perhaps being overwhelmed by choice? She says she has really stuck to her style, especially as she’s got older, realising that trends don’t work for her…she doesn’t let fashion wear her… such a great lesson!

Stylistically she says she is inspired by the designer Phoebe Philo, a woman who is totally confident and comfortable in her own skin. But also by Kim Bassinger in 91/2 weeks…just totally fabulous, and the uber stylist, the French woman Emanuelle Alt, who as she says, manages with a few product types to “make it look new every time”. She is clearly drawn to women who use a uniform of sorts…their uniform.

I absolutely loved this conversation with Maddy, she is incredibly modest, considered and gracious. Thank you for being such a great guest x

In this episode of Style DNA I go on a sartorial journey with the Founder and CEO of Gold Collagen, the visionary Tony Sanguinetti.

Growing up in Italy, Tony’s love of great-tasting food (a cultural expectation!) was bolstered by the idea that fresh ingredients were inherent to a healthy lifestyle. He was taught that we are what we eat and drink, and this philosophy of living better, for longer, remains at the heart of the Gold Collagen brand today.

As a young man, Tony carved out an interest in nutrition and followed an exacting diet and fitness routine. In his 20s, he embarked upon a successful career as a model for leading designers in Milan, Paris and New York where he realised that beauty captivates consumers - not just in the fashion industry, but in every aspect of life. He walked for the shows of Armani, Dolce Gabbana, Ferre and many others …the exposure to these beautiful clothes refined his style.

It was a life-defining trip to Japan that radically shaped the perspective of his future business and inspired the ethos at the heart of GOLD COLLAGEN®. Unlike European culture, which relied heavily upon external creams to combat ageing, he noticed that Japanese women treated aesthetic beauty as external evidence for inner health. In other words, they believe that a healthy body from within is the first step towards ageless beauty. The myriad benefits of their diet, health and well-being routines were immediately apparent to Tony. Treating food as a medicine and using nutrition and supplements to support inner health and restore balance had given the Japanese the highest life expectancy in the world. He realised that in doing so, they’d also identified the root cause of the visible signs of ageing.

Inspired by his trip, Tony had a vision to innovate, create and develop a formulation that could support the immune system from the inside out.

In our conversation Tony explains his mission to reduce the effects of ageing. He tells me that a person’s age is defined by 3 factors: skin (plump and hydrated versus dry and wrinkly), hair (thick, shiny and voluminous versus thin, dull and brittle) and body mobility (supple joints versus aching, stiff joints, strong muscles versus weak, tired muscles) and discovered that the unifying thread that tied those 3 factors together was collagen. And that the amount of collagen in our body decreases as we age.

We discuss aesthetic medicine too…fascinating.

And how clothes are our armour, how we message through them and how Tom Ford is his style icon.

I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you Tony for being such a great guest.