“There was a time for models where you’d think, ‘I’m 27, my career is over’,” says Carolyn Murphy. We’re meeting over Zoom - her logging on from Los Angeles, where she has just just hosted a breakfast for Estée Lauder as part of her role as global spokesmodel for the brand. At 47, her career is clearly far from over. Rather than marking a work downturn, 27 was in fact the age at which Murphy first signed with Estée Lauder, a partnership which has lasted two decades and made her face synonymous with iconic franchises such as Advanced Night Repair, Double Wear and Bronze Goddess.
“I didn’t start modelling until my early twenties, while my peers started much younger at 15 or 16. When I signed for Estée Lauder, I already had a baby! I feel like I was such a late bloomer,” she says. “But I’ve always felt that with age comes wisdom. Personally, buying beauty products, I think it’s important to see women of all ages. A 28-year-old can’t represent something that a 48-year-old wants to buy.”
And she’s not alone in thinking that. Murphy is part of a cohort of models in their forties, including Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow and Liya Kebede, who are as much at home on catwalks and in campaigns now as they were two decades ago; she has walked for Off-White, Fendi, The Row and Isabel Marant in recent seasons. Meanwhile, the conversation around positive ageing - in particular, the move away from “anti” ageing marketing - has catalysed a shift in the terminology surrounding beauty.
Murphy says she is often inspired by Estée Lauder herself, who began her company in her uncle’s garage and promoted the idea of beauty as a celebration of confidence and attitude. “I feel like Estée was such a change maker - she really was this modern woman, so ahead of her time,” Murphy says. “Just when I think I’ve uncovered everything and know her philosophies about ageing and confidence and beauty, I learn something new. She was an incredible woman.”
Murphy credits her own love of beauty to her upbringing and, in particular, her maternal grandmother. “She really was big on femininity, but it wasn’t that she wasn’t strong - it was about enhancing those attributes. Putting on a red lipstick to make yourself feel better, the importance of skincare. She loved baby blue, so she had a baby blue carpet, the little chair with the tufted velvet blue seat on it, and her little tray with her tubes of lipsticks, her creams and lotions and potions and perfumes,” she says. “But it’s not just products. My nana always said, ‘beauty is as beauty does’. It’s all-encompassing, it’s about your friendships, and family, and that confidence - which I admittedly haven’t always had - but being kind to yourself, and being kind to other people.”
In terms of her own looks - those instantly-recognisable features, golden complexion and piercing blue eyes - Murphy is, even over Zoom, as striking and as glowing as she was in her twenties. But that’s not to say her face is entirely line-free. “I embrace my wrinkles, I’ve earned them! It doesn’t mean I like them all the time,” she laughs. Her approach to skincare is, she says, informed by what she’s learned in more than 20 years of modelling.
“Now in my forties, I wish I would have worn more sunblock in my twenties. Especially living in LA! But also what I learned from the beauty editors in Asia years ago was to be really gentle with your skin, and to layer,” she says. Each day she uses Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Micro Cleansing Balm, Micro Essence Skin Activating Treatment Lotion and the new Revitalizing Supreme+ Youth Power Creme, as well as everyone’s favourite little brown bottle: Advanced Night Repair. Which, incidentally, she uses in the morning as well as at night (“It’s magic in a bottle, hands-down the greatest product on earth!”).
Estée Lauder Micro Essence Skin Activating Treatment Lotion
Estée Lauder Revitalizing Supreme+ Youth Power Creme Moisturizer
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum Synchronized Multi-Recovery Complex
She’s passed these beauty lessons on to her own daughter, Dylan, who is now 21, and recently moved out of the family home. “Actually she came over the other day - we cooked, and did our face masks and nails, and watched bad TV,” she laughs. “And I have all the products of course. I always say, I grew up with the brand Estée Lauder but she really grew up with the brand.”
Murphy is a firm believer in the positive effects of what you put into your body as well as onto it, drinking “almost a gallon of water a day”, and reeling off a list of preferred supplements including vitamin D, vitamin C, krill oil and collagen powder. She also exercises regularly, mixing up hiking, yoga, pilates and surfing - “covered in sunscreen, obviously”. But, in the same breath, she extols the benefits of wine, chocolate and laughter for creating a happily balanced lifestyle - plus David Attenborough documentaries, of course. “I love David Attenborough! I love watching positive TV, because there’s so much negativity out there,” she says.
Wild Nutrition Food-Grown Vitamin D
Boots Krill Oil + Omega 3
Perhaps it’s this balance and self-confidence that makes her just as bookable a model now as she was two decades ago. “Beauty really is all-encompassing - it’s about what you’re feeling,” she says. “I think in your 20s you’re still figuring it out, but in your 40s you really kind of settle in with this wisdom. I think that’s so attractive.”
