How Sarah Jessica Parker looks so good at 60, and the lessons all women can learn
But just as influential as Carrie's collection of avant-garde gowns, Fendi Baguettes and Manhattan-ready Manolos is Parker's own sense of fashion – and refreshingly realistic approach to ageing. It's a combination that has seen her become a midlife style icon who is somehow always defiantly herself, known for luminous skin and chic hair as well as a playful, confident approach to dressing.
'She will forever be my most pinned style icon,' says style editor Erica Davies, who says she still looks to Parker for inspiration as she 'hurtles' towards her fifties. 'I love to see a woman in her midlife proving that age is nothing but a number, looking completely fabulous and totally at ease with both herself and her sense of style.'
But how does SJP still look so good, especially as she famously avoids Botox? Let's delve into her skin, hair, make-up and style secrets to find out.
Style
For fashion psychologist Carolyn Mair, Parker's enduring style is reflective of her genuine love of clothes and accessories. 'Her ability to maintain her distinctive style throughout midlife portrays a combination of her authentic self-expression and her intrinsic enjoyment of fashion,' says Mair. 'Dressing up likely provides joy and creative stimulation, and this empowers her to navigate midlife with confidence and flair.'
This confidence is infectious. 'Carrie gave me permission to have fun and play around with my clothes in a way that no one else had before,' says Davies. 'And while SJP may not be as bold as Carrie, there is a lot of overlap. I love her playfulness – she appreciates fashion, but doesn't take it, or herself, too seriously. She's happy mixing unusual colour combinations, trying out new clothing shapes or putting together pattern combinations in a unique way.'
Hair
Gina Gilbert has been the colourist behind Parker's flattering, lived-in blonde for 16 years. 'We like a lot of dimension,' she says. 'With Sarah Jessica's skin tone and beautiful crystal blue eyes, she chose to go with a softer golden blonde tone and then add a few brighter pieces to make it pop and give her that sun-kissed, surfer blonde. Her base colour is a semi-permanent natural brown.'
As well as looking great, her hair colour has an anti-ageing effect, as Melanie Smith, senior colourist at Hari's salon group, explains. 'It disguises the grey and is pretty low maintenance too,' she says. 'The dimension can also make the hair appear thicker, which is great as we tend to lose hair, or at the very least see it become a bit finer, as we age.'
Stylist Serge Normant is the brains behind the artfully undone waves that have become an SJP signature. To recreate it at home, Hershesons stylist Nataliia Bumford suggests curling random strands with a wand, pulling the hair down as you curl to keep things relaxed and alternating between curling away from the face and towards it.
Skin
Parker is known for her glowing skin, maintained with minimal intervention. She's shared that she's tried Sofwave, an ultrasound skin-tightening treatment, but avoids Botox. In 2023, she told The Telegraph: 'I'm an actor – I have to move my eyebrows. I'm meant to be sharing emotion and communicating with my face, which, for me, needs to move.'
She's also shared details of her surprisingly simple skincare routine, which includes a penchant for E45 Face Foaming Cleanser, £8.99, and even a humble bar of soap. 'Parker lives by a slimline yet extremely efficacious routine that is said to involve cleansing, hydration and sun protection,' says aesthetic doctor and surgeon Dr Paris Acharya. 'She avoids neuromodulators like Botox, so alternative treatments that utilise radiofrequency to support ageing skin and boost collagen production are key.
'She's also known to dabble with superficial chemical peels, and while she hasn't stipulated having had skin boosters [like Profhilo], I would hedge a bet that these would be part of her aesthetic treatment plan.'
Make-up
'SJP has always gone for really hyper-natural skin, where of course make-up is present but, crucially, doesn't look it,' explains beauty journalist and podcast host, Madeleine Spencer. Parker's longtime make-up artist Elaine Offers Woulard frequently shares which products she uses to achieve these subtly enhanced, youthfully glowing looks. Among her favourite brands are Charlotte Tilbury, Glossier and beauty insider favourite, Merit.
Offers Woulard describes creating a 'warming halo' with Merit's Bronze Balm, £26, before applying Flush Balm, £26, in 'Cheeky' on the apples of the cheeks. 'Merit makes natural, glowing make-up easy,' says Spencer. 'I use the Flush Balm every day, just sliding it onto skin and blending with finger tips. It instantly perks up my complexion. I'm 40, but I would do this for someone who was 80 with the same results – it doesn't have an upper age limit.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart review – is this the future for America?
Gary Shteyngart is the observational standup of American letters, a puckish, playful Russian-born author who views the US through the eyes of an inquisitive tourist. The immigrant melting pot of New York is his stage; the intricate English language his prop. Shteyngart's characters, typically lightly veiled alter egos, are always getting lost, tripping up and mangling basic social interactions. It's the missed connections and short circuits that give his fictions their spark. Shteyngart's sixth novel is a lively, skittish Bildungsroman, shading towards darkness as it tracks the journey – literal, educational, emotional – of 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, an overanxious, over-watchful academic high achiever whose run of straight As has just been blighted by a B. 'Being smart is one of the few things I have to be proud of,' laments Vera, who diligently maintains a 'Things I Still Need to Know Diary' in which she makes note of difficult words and intriguing figures of speech. The girl is articulate and precocious, bent on self-improvement, and never mind the fact that she confuses 'facile' with 'futile' and 'hollowed' with 'hallowed' and is wont to wax lyrical about the 'she-she' districts of Manhattan. Her vocabulary is almost – but crucially not quite – sufficient to give us the whole story and explain what it means. Always happy to show his workings, Shteyngart cites Henry James's 1897 novel What Maisie Knew as the prompt for Vera, or Faith's child's-eye account of complicated adult affairs, although his gauche heroine bears a passing resemblance to the author himself as portrayed in his 2014 memoir, Little Failure. Friendless Vera lives with her rackety Russian-Jewish father, Igor (Shteyngart's name at birth), who edits a floundering liberal arts magazine, her harried Wasp stepmother, Anne (who added the 'e' in tribute to Anne Frank), and a boisterous younger half-brother, Dylan, who likes exposing himself to houseguests. But she also has (or possibly had) a Korean-born mother, long since vanished from the scene. Invisible Iris Choi plays the tale's white whale or MacGuffin; the elusive hidden figure that Vera is determined to locate. The eccentric Bradford-Shmulkins are lurching towards crisis, but they seem a model of stability when compared with the rest of the country, which reveals itself in unflattering flashes in the corners of the narrative. Shteyngart's novel, we come to realise, plays out a decade from now, in a 'post-democracy' USA where red state officials monitor menstrual cycles, self-driving cars shop their owners to the feds and the news platforms are abuzz with Russian disinformation. Desperate to redeem herself at school, Vera prepares to debate in support of the proposed 'Five-Three Amendment', a piece of racist legislation that would grant added voting weight to those 'exceptional Americans' whose ancestors arrived before the revolutionary war, 'but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains'. In so doing, of course, she's arguing against her own interests. Blond, blue-eyed Dylan would count as an 'exceptional American'. Dark‑haired, brown-eyed Vera would not. Henry James provides the prompt but his involvement begins and ends there, because Vera, or Faith isn't Jamesian at all. The prose is simple, breezy and conversational, even when it's stumbling artfully over its words. If Shteyngart's novel possesses anything so fixed as a north star or a patron saint, it's surely not James but Vladimir Nabokov. The title references Ada, or Ardor, while its protagonist comes styled in the manner of a pint-sized Timofey Pnin: a dogged innocent caught between cultures and half-lost in translation. In the course of her adventures, Vera learns that she was named after Nabokov's wife, 'a woman who was a genius herself but in the olden days she had to serve her husband'. Vera Nabokov's 21st-century namesake – driven and decent and at the top of her class – similarly risks being dismissed as a second-class citizen. The novel is busy and ingratiating, almost to a fault, which is to say that it feels distracted, unsettled; a cultural code-switcher itself. Vera, or Faith was reputedly drafted at speed in a little under two months, incorporating elements from a spy novel that the author had recently abandoned. That accounts for its messy vitality and its frequent, perturbing shifts of gear. Shteyngart's ode to a good American in a bad America conspires to be, by turns, a rueful human comedy and a coming-of-age caper, a dystopian chiller and an espionage yarn. The colourful tale never satisfyingly hangs together; its component pieces tend to jar more than gel. But Shteyngart sets about his material with abundant energy and charm. He sketches a convincing caricature of a near-future USA and provides a stoical heroine that we can uncomplicatedly root for. Even in a degraded, compromised, up-is-down social climate, that has to be deserving of a solid B grade at least. Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart is published by Atlantic (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
BBC News
15 hours ago
- BBC News
American musical satirist Tom Lehrer dies at 97, US media report
American musician and satirist Tom Lehrer has died at the age of 97, according to US media a Harvard-trained mathematician, wrote darkly humorous songs, often with political connotations, that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Modern comedians such as Weird Al Yankovich said they have been influenced by Lehrer's death was confirmed to the New York Times by David Herder, a in Manhattan in 1928, Lehrer was a classically trained pianist. But despite his musical success, he spent most of his life pursuing academia. His teaching posts included spells at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California. Lehrer's most enduring songs include The Elements, a list of the chemical elements set to the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General from The Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera. Other fan favourites include The Masochism Tango, in which singer extols his beloved's violent passions with the lyrics, "I ache for the touch of your lips, dear / But much more for the touch of your whips, dear..."
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
The bizarre new trend in the homes of the super rich beloved by Kim Kardashian and Jeff Bezos
When it comes to the super-wealthy, their homes can range from everything from beachfront mansions to glitzy penthouses. But while individual tastes may vary, one trend has emerged among the rich which is beloved by celebrities and elites alike. It appears that premium architecture and a coveted location are no longer enough. Celebrity home stager and interior designer Cheryl Eisen said what the wealthy really want is a fully furnished home. While their massive budgets would allow celebrities to put their own stamp on a home, Eisen says they prefer to outsource the design and often all stick to the same color palette. 'Great staging isn't just about aesthetics, it's a strategy,' she explained. 'It gives buyers clarity and delivers maximum returns for sellers.' Eisen has staged homes for celebrity clients like Kim Kardashian, Robert De Niro, Daniel Craig, and even Jeff Bezos. She staged everything from $100 million penthouses in Manhattan to mansions in Beverly Hills and waterfront palaces on Miami's billionaire's row. She offers her services with two companies Interior Marketing Group and Eisen Design House. After her decades of experience, she's noticed that her celebrity clients are drawn to quiet luxury. They want their spaces to feel calm, and tranquil and gravitate towards neutral tones. The 56-year-old said that not only do homes she stages sell 82 percent faster than the average in New York, they sell well above asking price when fully furnished. Turnkey homes - homes that are ready for living the moment they are purchased - have become the norm in the luxury real estate industry. It's no longer a desire but an expectation, Eisen said. She revealed a lot of the business she is seeing is with vacation homes in Florida, which makes perfect sense to Eisen. 'If you're going to buy a second home, why spend a year furnishing it when instead you can buy a completely furnished home and just bring a tooth brush?' she said. Staging allows clients to imagine themselves in a space, and to feel something when they enter it. 'We want them to walk in and feel really calm and at home and at peace,' she told Daily Mail. 'We stay away from things that are too taste specific that could alienate a specific population,' she said. Eisen said the best design choices for turnkey homes are simple ones. 'Layered, neutral tones and textures, what we're really showcasing is beautiful architecture in the home,' she says. 'The formula for us has always been broad appeal.' It is perhaps surprising that this muted pallet is preferred, given some of the garish taste of some celebrities. Eisen said the rise in buyers purchasing their homes fully furnished and designed has always been a no-brainer to her. 'The wealthy will buy a home and then hire an interior designer and spend a year making it gorgeous,' she said. Whether it's an investment property or a personal home, turnkey buyers can move in on day one. 'You don't have to spend the time and energy on it,' she said. That's a formula that apparently worked for celebrity buyers like Jeff Bezos and Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. Both buyers purchased one of their homes completely furnished, and Teigen and Legend even hired her to redo their Los Angeles residence. The very wealthy have properties in every city, it only makes sense to purchase them ready to go. But, they're looking for different things in different cities. As much as Eisen aims for broad appeal, a vacation home in Miami looks different than a penthouse in Manhattan. 'In New York it's a little edgier, you can put some vintage pieces in there and give it a little edge,' said Eisen. Although she likes to stick with neutrals she said occasionally she adds unique art pieces to tie in a pop of color. In Florida, homes come out a little brighter and more modern. She said luxury buyers like to feel at home and at peace as soon as they step onto a property 'In Florida, since they're vacation homes they want everything to feel very new and fresh,' she said, adding that her designs tend to gear toward, 'warm tones and organic materials'. But despite their love of neutrals, the super rich are reportedly not adverse to an unexpected pop of personality, in moderation. Eisen said luxury homeowners are steering toward eye-catching shapes and statement pieces - even if they tend to stick within the confines of a natural pallet. She's seen curved sofas, coffee tables shaped like guitar picks, and an emphasis on imperfect shapes and materials. 'Those are all in warm neutral, nature tones, it's just created a whole layered organic textured thing,' she noted. However, one of her more outrageous requests in recent memory steered away from the organic, neutral look. Eisen said former Real Housewife of New York, Bethenny Frankel asked to have a zipline installed in her yard. Eisen said she is excited by such projects, which allow her to step outside of her turnkey formula. 'We're always so reliant on a broad appeal that when a client asks us to think outside the box it's an exciting challenge for us.' One of her more recent penthouse designs at Five Park Residence in Miami features bold colors and patterns throughout the home. 'It's all very dramatic, each room has this experiential element,' she said. Still, she's happy doing turnkey designs. Eisen said she'd always hoped the real estate industry would take this turn. 'It's a no-brainer,' she said.
