How Prue Leith nailed her signature look – in her 80s
There was a moment on Radio 4’s The Food Programme in late September when 36-year-old Rupy Aujla – a doctor-turned-cook and one of her on-screen collaborators – described Dame Prue Leith as ‘kinda like the Madonna or the Kylie of our food world. She doesn’t appear to lose touch despite essentially working through a number of different generations.’
As we approach week five of The Great British Bake Off, it’s clear that Dr Aujla speaks the absolute truth. It’s no great leap of the imagination to agree that Dame Prudence Margaret Leith is just like those doyennes of the pop world.
Ever since the start of her career, when she launched Leiths restaurant in 1969 (when Kylie was a baby and Madonna 11), she has proven herself a master at staying relevant in a world that is forever changing.
This is a woman whose reincarnations have included caterer, novelist, food campaigner... and national treasure. Someone who, at 81, shows no sign of slowing down, and has two recently launched fashion lines, for spectacles and jewellery.
In her ninth decade, Prue remains a part of the national conversation, in living rooms, at dinner tables and on social media, where her look is currently being talked up as the ideal drag Hallowe’en costume – something of a high compliment.
That conversation revolves around her joyfully rainbow-hued style, which sees her clashing bright-red lipstick with hot-pink glasses (totally Saint Laurent, darling!) and a neon-bright floral silk tunic dress. It homes in on her youthful energy and absolute refusal to sit invisibly in the corner because of her age.
What makes Prue’s style so translatable, joyful and inspiring on TV is that it’s almost – but not quite – a cartoon. I should know – I helped Mary Portas, the retail consultant and broadcaster, and also my ex, evolve her TV style: sharp red bob, piles of bracelets and, of course, fabulous clothes.
Doing that involved collaborating with Mary on where her natural look could be amplified to maximise screen impact, and working out what looked good on TV, versus what looked – as Mary would say – ‘hiiiiideous’.
To transform Mary’s style into what we later referred to, in humorous shorthand, as ‘Bob ’n’ Bangles’ was a process that took place over time. Mary is the first to admit that she didn’t arrive on our screens fully formed. ‘My hair definitely wasn’t there at the beginning,’ she says. ‘As with Anna Wintour, eventually, my bob became my signature. Looking back now I see it was about what looked and felt right, and what I wanted to project at the time.’
As with Mary, so with Prue, whose look is easy to break down into its component parts: bright eyewear, even brighter lipstick, bold jewellery, an eye-popping but camera-friendly top and a crowning blow-dry. And even though we can’t all be on TV, there’s something to learn for every older woman from Prue’s inimitable style.
It wasn’t always this way. While the short hair has long been a signature, and nobody could ever have called her frumpy, Prue’s look over the decades was nevertheless a fairly understated affair, with little sign of the later-life TV star evident – at least until the 2010s.
In the early years of her career, working as a restaurateur and later as head of her eponymous cooking school, she could be seen in traditional ’80s businesswoman power suits and comfortable chef gear and aprons.
There was only a hint of something a little more adventurous when she dressed for personal appearances, with graphic tops and trousers in strong colours – although, when you look a little closer at photographs of the unformed icon-in-the-making, you do notice that no outfit was complete without a bold necklace. You wouldn’t have called Prue unstylish, exactly, but TV icon she was not.
Five years ago, though, everything changed. In 2016, Prue began working on My Kitchen Rules for Channel 4, and as part of her makeover for the series, two stylists were called in – Jane Galpin and Claire Ginzler.
The pair have a fashion and TV pedigree that cannot be paralleled, as far as I can tell, anywhere in the world. As a team, Galpin and Ginzler worked on the classic TV fashion programme The Clothes Show from the late 1980s, and later for many years they were responsible for producing the BBC’s daily makeover show Style Challenge, performing hundreds of on-stage makeovers.
They were also the team behind Channel 4’s 10 Years Younger and How To Look Good Naked with Gok Wan. Together they turned women who were stuck in a fashion rut into younger-looking, more confident and glamorous versions of themselves. ‘We’ve lost count of how many makeovers we’ve worked on together,’ says Galpin.
The duo’s long-held belief – which reflects the ‘you do you’ style maxim of our times – is that an ultimate signature style should always reflect the individual personality of the wearer, no matter their age. ‘We are not led by trends; rather we create trends to fit each unique character we work with,’ explains Ginzler.
And so it was with Prue. ‘Prue has always had fantastic style – so we embraced and evolved it, taking it one step further with oomph to truly reflect her magnificent personality on TV,’ says Galpin.
And so the transformation began. For TV, the hair has to be larger than life to read well on screen, so the first stop was at hairstylist Billi Currie’s salon in Chiltern Street in London, where the short locks went from wash-and-go to fresh-from-the-salon polish – the grey retained but lightened and made bouncier.
With her hair amped up – all later-life style icons need good hair (see Anna Wintour, Maggie Thatcher and Iris Apfel) – the next job was to sort the wardrobe out. Satisfying decisions were made about shape, for a start: there were to be absolutely no fiddly collars, just simple round necks, all the better to show off the bold necklaces. Sleeves were to be three-quarter length only – to read better on camera when working with food. And good tailoring was in.
‘Prue is an hourglass shape, 5ft 9in and a size 16-18,’ says Galpin. ‘She doesn’t like boxy or baggy shapes that cut into her silhouette. So we source long tops, waistcoats and jackets, and we work with layers to create clean lines.’ Red-carpet appearances, meanwhile, see Prue give Pleats Please Issey Miyake a twirl.
When it came to colour, out went the dark tailored jackets, to be replaced with bright tunics and blazers from the likes of Carole Waller, who hand-paints all her items, and the decorative tailor Beatrice von Tresckow, mixed in with high-street staples from the likes of Boden, Seasalt, Joules, M&S and John Lewis.
‘I’m on a mission to get women – especially older women – to be bolder, not to play safe and boring, and embrace colour,’ Prue tells me. This extends to her home, which has, she says, ‘a daffodil-yellow kitchen, a fire-engine-red library and a turquoise office’.
Finally, what Galpin refers to as ‘the garnish of her look’ was added – Prue’s absolute passion for colourful jewellery and glasses. (‘She’d much rather have that than a handbag you can’t see on the floor,’ says Galpin.) The latter became brighter and more flattering, while the necklaces took on the ‘go big or go home’ boldness we know and love today.
Indeed, Prue now has so many necklaces that her husband, John Playfair, recently designed and built a wall of ‘jewellery trees’ to hang them from at their home. Oh, and yes, she does have eyewear drawers, à la Elton John, to house her growing collection of specs, thanks to her collaborative collection with Israeli artist and designer Ronit Furst.
For their part, Galpin and Ginzler are as under Prue’s spell as the rest of us. ‘Honestly, we love every minute of every hour working with Prue,’ says Ginzler. ‘She works harder than all of us put together.’ ‘Her joy of life and living is infectious,’ agrees Galpin. ‘She energises us, and we want our work with her to inspire all the women out there who would benefit from it.’
For comparison, one has to look no further than the current series of The Great British Bake Off, which Prue has been judging since 2017, when the programme moved from the BBC to Channel 4.
The oldest contestant this time round is Maggie, a 70-year-old retired midwife from Poole whose high-energy approach to life, skill with the oven, infectious smile and thatch of short grey hair have inevitably led to comparisons between her and Prue.
In week one, Paul Hollywood popped Prue’s hot-pink glasses on Maggie’s face, highlighting that – visually at least – Maggie is remarkably like Prue, although minus all the things that make Prue look like, well, Prue.
The possibilities for all the Maggies out there were immediately clear. It also served as a rallying reminder to women of all ages that getting older can be a fun and stylish ride.
Not least Maggie herself. She might have been voted out of this week's Bake Off tent, but a few weeks ago, she launched an Instagram account, @maggietheseasidebaker, and guess what? She’s started wearing bright-red lipstick.
