Charla Krupp

Author, How Not to Look Old
www.hownottolookold.com

Former beauty editor and current best-selling author Charla Krupp has a message for ladies everywhere: Be ready to reinvent yourself. She is on a mission to spread the word while traveling the country in support of her breakout book, How Not to Look Old.

Krupp knows of what she speaks. After building a mega-successful career as an entertainment editor, style/shopping expert, beauty director, and Web site editor, with stints at such magazines as Glamour and InStyle, Krupp lost her job as executive editor of Shop Etc. when the publication folded in 2006. But she wasn’t exactly devastated—she’d already signed a book contract and welcomed the free time to finish her manuscript.

But it wasn’t just luck that helped Krupp to weather this career change so well. She credits her ongoing success to the fact that she has always juggled several ventures at once. And she recommends that all women do the same. In fact, her book deal resulted from a decade’s worth of regular appearances as a style expert on “The Today Show,” not just from her work in magazines.

Krupp not only wants all women to diversify. She wants you to look young and fresh while doing so.

What we learned from Charla: Appearance counts! “In our society, women who don’t look good are just invisible. We don’t even look at them. We don’t count them. Looking good is power. I also am on a mission to prove that taking care of yourself and caring about fashion and beauty are not superficial and shallow. It’s really vital to your career longevity, because nobody wants to hire somebody who looks outdated. If you look outdated, if you look like you don’t know what’s going on, people will think that your ideas are outdated, too.”

Building the Book

“It took about three years to get this book from idea to finished product. I wrote a 65-page proposal, which took me about a year, and then it took me about six months to write the book, and then another six months to do the list in the book—in the back of the book, I have a resource guide of where to get gorgeous in 21 different cities. It’s a great resource for women who are traveling—if you need to get a quick blow-dry or a manicure in a city that you’re not familiar with, just check out this list.”

Giving Aging Women What They Need

“I’m one of these people who have extensive files in my house. Every time I see a great story on makeup, or lipstick, or hair, or back pain, or whatever, I just constantly clip and save. So every time I was about to research the hair, I read all of my clips, and it really helped. I also bought 99 other books about style in order to make sure that I didn’t repeat a lot of information that was already out there. I wanted my book to be totally different, to fill a niche no other book had filled, to really address the process of aging and women.”

Reinvent Yourself or Be Left Behind

“There are a lot of women in their 50s right now who are trying to figure out what to do in the second half of their life. They need to reinvent themselves. They need to start new businesses. They need to join Ladies Who Launch. They need to depend on themselves instead of corporate America for the second half of their life, because the other thing that’s happening is we’re living longer.”

Generosity: Better Than a Resume

“You have to get your resume updated. Do that ASAP. Always network. You should always be getting people’s business cards and meeting people. And I really believe in karma. If you’re nice to people who are looking for jobs now, if you can help somebody, if you can make a connection, they’re more likely to help you later. You have to be incredibly generous with your time and help people who need help, because tomorrow it might be you.”

How to Wow

“You really need to stand out from the crowd. You need to do something amazing to get the attention. [When I was an editor] someone once sent us a cake, which was a really cute idea, and everyone in the office stood around and had some cake and then talked about the products that came with the cake.”

Be Ready or Be Sorry

“If you don’t have it, wait until you do. I also think that you only get one chance. If you come up with something and it isn’t great, or it doesn’t work, or it’s going to fall apart, or you’re not ready and you can’t deliver and you take up people’s time, people are going to be not so happy to see you next time around.”

Recommended Reading

“A book that was really helpful to me was Leap! by Sara Davidson. I’ve been recommending it to a lot of people, because it’s about women in midlife changing careers. And she’s very honest about what happened to her in Hollywood. I think it’s really hard to be that honest. I even quoted her in my book. Here’s this award-winning writer, and people didn’t even want to return her calls because people thought she was over the hill. She interviewed a lot of people who were once famous and were having difficult times. And I think it was very inspiring, how everyone is kind of in the same situation, and how we all, from Cheryl Tiegs to Carly Simon, need to reinvent ourselves.”

A Book of Truths

“I have to say that I would never have written this book when I was editing a major magazine, because when you’re editing a magazine, you’re always worried about who you’re going to upset. Are you going to offend a reader? Are you going to offend an advertiser? Are you going to offend some national organization? And when I was writing this book, I just thought, ‘This is for the people I want to reach, and I want to be direct.’ And I say things in this book that have not been said in fashion magazines.

“For instance, one thing I say in my book that I would never say if I were still a beauty director is that I think some of the best products you can buy right now for beauty can be found at Target. I think that Olay Definity is an amazing line for anybody over 40. I think Pantene is an amazing hair-care line. I think CoverGirl Advanced Radiance—that’s the Christie Brinkley skin-care line—is a fantastic foundation. I think Maybelline’s Define-a-Lash is great mascara. I don’t think that women should feel that they have to spend a fortune.”

Build a Beauty Foundation

“I think that you have to get to a healthy body weight. I think that’s important. Another thing is I think that you should definitely get fitted for a new bra. Even if you’ve lost five pounds, you should get fitted for a new bra. I think you should be a fanatic about skin care. Get a great skin-care system.”

There’s Such a Thing as Too Perfect

“Sometimes you can look too perfect. If you have every single thing in place, it’s going to look old. You have to take it down a notch. Don’t have your hair totally sprayed. Don’t dry clean your jeans. Don’t wear a matching suit. Have something like a little off, and it will look younger.”

Dressing Advice

“A lot of older women just have too much cleavage, and their skirts are way too short. You’ve got to look elegant as you get older. And then there’s a group of women who don’t show their bodies at all. They just wear clothes that are really baggy. They wear mom jeans. They wear really big shirts. And you need to see that you still have a shape. You need to have a waist and have great accessories.”

A Timeless Fashion Philosophy

“I just make sure that everything I wear is fresh, new, of the moment, and in style. I buy fewer clothes, but I buy better clothes. And anything that doesn’t look good on me I give to somebody else. I’m really brutal about, ‘Does this look good, or does this not look good?’”

Quick Tips for Looking Fabulous

“I have a book filled with more than a hundred of them. But let me just pick out some of my favorites …

I love Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer. I think there are many days when you don’t have to do a full face of foundation.
Pink lipstick makes such a difference. It is very luminescent, and it gives you a shine and lightness around your mouth. Women who wear dark lipstick are not doing themselves any favors, because the dark really plays off all the lines and dark circles you might have on your face. And it can make your lips look really thin, and it can bleed over the lip line, and it can make you look really sad and “O.L.”—old lady—as I say in my book. I like Chanel Frivole. They also have a lipstick called La Kiki. I like Clinique’s pink lipstick called Bamboo and YSL has several good lipsticks.
There is an amazing bra right now from Spanx that’s really great. $62. It eliminates back fat. It has no metal in the back. It fastens in the front.
There’s a great shapewear piece I wear every day from Lipo in a Box (www.lipoinabox.com). There’s a $40 shapewear piece that’s the high-waisted brief with legs, and it goes from right under your bra band to down to your mid-thigh. It’s so comfortable, and it really holds you in.”

Parting Thoughts …

• “I am happiest when … I’m shopping in a city I’ve never been to before. Or in Paris.”
• “Success to me means … having the freedom to make my own schedule.”
• “I will retire when … I am dead.”
• “I will always think of myself as … just a regular girl from Wilmette, Illinois.”

This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson.