Lauren Hutton Comes Out With Good Stuff
By: MINDY SPAR
When Lauren Hutton turned 40, the major cosmetics company
she represented told her it was time for her to go. She
couldn't represent the product anymore because women over 40
wouldn't buy makeup. Hutton, the world's first supermodel,
was, in effect, put out to pasture.
Never mind that she was, and still is, as beautiful as the
day she first showed up on a magazine cover. The powers that
be looked at the data and Hutton was out of a job.
"We are like stone-age folk. Some day they will look
back on us like that," Hutton says over tea in the
Charleston Place hotel while in town for the From Darkness
to Light Gala and to promote her new line of cosmetics,
Lauren Hutton's Good Stuff. "It's extremely important
for women not to be parked."
Hutton has never been one to let herself be parked. A world
traveler and adventurer, she has picked herself up and
started over time and time again. She rebounded with a movie
career after losing her modeling contract, survived a
motorcycle accident that by all accounts should have left
her dead or paralyzed at best and restarted a career in
modeling at age 46 when the next oldest model working was 26
years old.
Now she is embarking on yet another career, as a cosmetics
entrepreneur. Hutton has developed a line of products for
mature skin, or what she calls "an experienced
generation."
Fortitude runs in her blood. Perhaps it is because the
59-year-old model was born here in Charleston to a family of
12-generation South Carolinians, or maybe because she was
raised in the swamps of Florida, having to watch out for
snakes and gators right outside her front door. Whatever it
is, Hutton is indeed more than a pretty face. "I like
to learn, I'm constantly learning. If I don't learn, I leave
town," she says. Hutton recently learned how to dogsled
and loved it. She can't wait to go again. This from a woman
who was not supposed to be able to walk for two years, which
would be just about now.
The last thing Hutton thought she would be doing at this
stage is running a cosmetics company. She even says there
are way too many of those. But when she decided to return to
modeling, she was horrified by how her photos were turning
out. She needed to understand why. "I stared at my face
in the mirror for hours and hours," she says. What she
came up with seems like common sense, but no one had yet put
it into practice. "As we get older, our shadows move
and our skin thins, especially around the eyes. Suddenly the
bone of the nose is showing and throwing shadows on the
eyes, making them look closer together. Our skin fades, our
eyebrows fade, we fade." But it is not as dreary as it
sounds.
Hutton got to work. She pounded makeup in her kitchen and
went in search of alternatives. "Most makeup has a lot
of mica and pearl in it," she says. "This is fine
on a young girl's face because she is poreless, but on an
older face, it makes the lines shine like lights on a
runway."
Her solution? Lauren Hutton's Good Stuff, an easy-to-use,
all-in-one compact with everything you need to make up your
face, including a magnifying mirror. Hutton began making up
these compacts and giving them to her friends about eight
years ago. The response was so positive that she decided to
start a company about three years ago. What to name the
product was a no-brainer. "I kept telling my friends,
'This is 'good stuff,' so that is what we decided to call
it."
She carries her own well-used compact in her bag and is not
hesitant to pull it out and start explaining how it all
works. "It's six-minute makeup," she says.
"Everything is in one place. At 40 you don't want to
spend a lot of time on makeup. If women use this and see how
quick and easy and great it is, they will use it for the
rest of their lives."
The face disc has an accompanying brush kit that is color
coded for simple use. There are four discs available, one
for each skin tone, pink, yellow, olive and brown. The disc
holds concealers for lines and shadows, color for lips and
cheeks and eyebrows and a gloss, and all are refillable.
On a video that comes with the disc, Hutton shares the
tricks of the trade she's learned after 40 years in the
business. One such trick is to apply a powder tint on the
inside of the lips to make them look fatter and fuller.
"As we get older, the lips thin, and that's not a good
look," she says.
Hutton herself is the best advertisement for her products.
She looks like she has on very little makeup, proving that
she definitely has hit upon some Good Stuff. "It's all
about being simple," Hutton says. "And no one will
know why you look so good."
Good Stuff can be purchased through the Internet at lauren
hutton.com.
Mindy Spar covers fashion. E-mail her at mindys@postandcourier.com.
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