Caroline Hirons: Britain's most powerful beauty expert

Times

14 hours ago

Caroline Hirons is going through some of her bêtes noires with me. Face wipes? 'You do not need one. They're not biodegradable, whatever they might say. Piss off.' The 'clean beauty' movement? 'Are people even still using 'toxic' to describe products? Is it 2011? Move on!' Face sheet masks? 'My main beef is they're not eco-friendly, but they also don't work.' Her voice rises nearly an octave. 'And then Neutrogena came out with individual face wipes in their own plastic [wrap], so you could travel with them. Has everyone lost their mind?'
Even if you've never heard of Hirons, the former Saturday girl at Harvey Nichols, now a 55-year-old mother of four children aged between 33 and 20, and grandmother of two, you have probably, unwittingly, been influenced by her. Her verdict on a skincare product has created, what is known in the industry as 'the Caroline effect'.
Case in point: when Clinique was about to discontinue its Take The Day Off cleansing balm, after poor sales in 2013, Hirons listed it in her blog's Hall of Fame. Sales rose 1,432 per cent. It is still Clinique's No 1 selling make-up remover. Or take Clarisonic, an electric face-cleaning brush, all the rage in the early 2010s — as she said, 'the Chanel handbag of the beauty world' — but a product that gave her 'the worst acne breakout of my life'. Clarisonic was shut down in 2020. Or the astoundingly pricey Dr Barbara Sturm skincare range, about which she has expressed some scepticism. In her defence, Hirons is positive about far more brands than she's negative about. 'But the industry is terrified of her,' one beauty insider tells me.
She's called the most powerful woman in the British beauty industry. 'Allegedly,' she says, with a quiet smile. 'I'm sure there'd be people like Charlotte Tilbury who'd have something to say about that. Maybe the most powerful woman in skincare. I'd take that.'
OK, but I ask her if she is more powerful than the beauty director of Vogue. Hirons nods and beams even more broadly. Not that this means — in today's lingo — she is an influencer. 'I've always pushed against that term,' she says. 'I get that it's cute, but from day one I didn't want it, because I spent a lot of time and money going to college to train. I'm someone who has influence, but I'm qualified to do so. I give advice [to skincare brands] around the world and it's not cheap.'
In person, Hirons is certainly a commanding — although perfectly friendly — presence. She is far more relatable to me, as a fellow Gen Xer, than the typical duck-lipped, Fake-Baked millennials who dominate beauty social media channels.
Having started blogging ('How old-fashioned that sounds now') about skincare in 2010, today Hirons's posts have been viewed some 200 million times. She estimates she's answered 250,000 skincare questions. She has 779,000 Instagram followers. Her first book, Skincare, became the bestselling British beauty book of all time. Three years ago, she launched her own skincare range, Skin Rocks, which is stocked in Liberty and Space NK. Skin Rocks is reported to have brought in £10 million in revenue in three years and recently secured investment to expand internationally.
The family (her husband, Jim, gave up his job with the local council to bring up the younger children as her career exploded) used to live in a flat in West Kensington. Now, with only one child left at home, they've moved to a slightly grander place in nearby Shepherds Bush. She doesn't do hobbies or holidays. Couldn't she retire on her riches? 'If I hadn't started my own brand, we'd be really comfortable. But I had to dip my toe in the pond, didn't I?'
Born in Liverpool, Hirons grew up in Warrington, Cheshire, from the age of nine. Her father was a mechanic while her mother and her grandmother worked on department store beauty counters. Aged 17, she moved to London, worked at HMV ('Just a dream, such a good time') and met Jim. When her two older children were toddlers, she found a Saturday job on the Aveda counter at Harvey Nicks — then Cool Britannia AbFab central. She only wanted some extra cash, but she found her vocation. 'I thought, this is what I'm supposed to do. I called my mum and was like, 'Why didn't you tell me beauty was this much fun?' '
One Saturday, alone on the counter, she made more sales than the entire team usually managed together. She was promoted to manager and began working full-time, while two nights a week (around the births of her two younger children) studying for her beautician diploma from the Steiner School of Beauty Therapy. Her first job after that was at Space NK, then she was hired by Sylvie Chantecaille to develop facials for her brand. She moved on to companies such as Liz Earle before becoming a freelance consultant helping US brands launch in the UK.
Then came social media. Initially, her blog was intended to be a place to describe the travails of family life, but almost immediately she realised hordes of (mainly older) women were desperate for definitive answers on which of the gazillion products out there worked and which was best for them — and she was uniquely qualified to advise.
What makes Hirons so beloved by her 'Freaks' (the name of the 150,000 members of her Facebook group) is the fact, as she puts it, 'I never kiss or blow smoke up anyone's arse.' This made her a rarity in an industry where everyone's lovely to everyone else (at least to their faces), because brands need coverage, while influencers (or, in the olden days, the likes of Vogue) need content, not to mention enjoying access to the glitzy junkets and freebies lavished upon them.
Does she ever get pushback from brands she's dissed? 'Once or twice. But it didn't end well for them. My followers are like a swarm of bees: 'How dare you?' Heads of big, big companies email their PRs — 'How do we get this post removed?' They say, 'You don't understand. This is Caroline.' You can offer me ten grand; I ain't going anywhere.'
No matter how hard she tries to stop herself, she is frequently political. Past targets have included antivaxers and Boris Johnson, after he joked in parliament during the pandemic about the delay in reopening beauty salons. 'I've never felt rage like it. I'd have been over that dispatch box at him.' The Beauty Backed campaign she launched to help those affected by the lockdowns raised £600,000.
She likes to joke that Jim once marvelled, 'Who would have thought that being gobby and opinionated would become a career?' Yet she doesn't appreciate the dozens of headlines describing her as 'opinionated' or 'no nonsense'. 'That's a really good way of dismissing me,' she says. 'They say, 'Oh, you're very confident.' It's fine for men to be confident, but for women it's a passive-aggressive insult. Men will still speak over me at meetings, and I go, 'When I'm finished, I'd love to hear your point. But I wasn't finished.' ' She pulls a face and flicks the bird at her imaginary interlocutor. 'It's their audacity. You can disagree with me, but in a lot of cases I can prove to you I'm right. There are people out there who don't like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. That's absolutely fine. I don't expect everyone to like me. I don't like everyone. But what I know they will do is respect my opinion. So go with God, my friends.'
We're sitting in a studio in east London, where she has just finished the Times photoshoot with her only daughter, Ava, a 23-year-old TikToker with 826,000 followers, compared with Hirons's 53,000 on the same platform. 'On TikTok I call myself 'Ava Hirons's mum'. Her success is her success; it's nothing to do with me. I can't go into a Space NK without being mobbed; she can't go to Westfield [shopping centre]. I could not be prouder.'
Now Hirons has written a book for Ava's fanbase, Teen Skincare, which briskly explains how young, hormonal, often spotty skin needs and (more importantly) doesn't need to be treated, with routines outlined and products recommended. As a mother of two Gen Z daughters, I wonder how it can compete with the source of all their knowledge: TikTok.
'They're exhausting, the TikTok myths,' Hirons says. 'It's mostly bad information or misinformation and it feels like you're pushing water uphill sometimes trying to correct it. So it's just easier to write a book. Point your kids in that direction and hope they read it.'
I hope mine do, because the book contains — among others — an invaluable 'Pile of Shit' section, which debunks viral trends such as beauty fridges ('Make it stop') and celebrity skincare brands ('Most celebrities don't give a toss about skin. They just want to slap their name on something and get the money/glory'). 'Stop buying shit you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't know,' Hirons pronounces.
The book is an antidote to the recent, quite gobsmacking 'Sephora Kids' phenomenon, where not even teens but girls aged as young as nine are being influenced into buying high-end beauty products at ridiculous prices, with ingredients designed for much older skin. 'I mean, the interest in the teen skincare book is because of this phenomenon, so obviously I'm being a hypocrite saying, 'Oh, it shouldn't happen,' ' Hirons says. 'But … Insanity!
• Viral beauty videos have Gen Z hooked on second-hand make-up
'I'd be in Space NK, see groups of teenagers buying things and I would say, 'That's not for you. You should be buying that for your mum. You do not need it. Put it down and get a Krispy Kreme.' Obviously, they're going to take more notice of me than they are of their mum. But if a girl is 14 and she babysits, has saved £100 and she wants to spend £80 on a moisturiser, let her — she's only going to do it once. Sometimes, they have to learn a lesson the hard way.'
Like many mothers and daughters, Hirons and Ava are in a great place now, but were continually 'locking horns' during the latter's teens. It didn't help that Hirons, who had just started the blog, was enduring perimenopause. 'It was a grim time. It's the clash of peak hormones on both sides. I was tired. I put on loads of weight. I was fed up. I wasn't depressed; I was just exhausted. I had no energy and brain fog. I thought, there's something wrong with me. I'm miserable. I'll show you a fat pic,' she says, scrolling her phone to show me some snaps where she's quite startlingly larger and frumpier-looking than today. 'Every part of me was bloated; I was so uncomfortable. Ava says you shouldn't say 'fat', but the body positivity movement's all good and well. I fully respect if that's how you feel. I wasn't feeling positive so I changed it.'
She began lifting weights, scoffing protein and (latterly) having Mounjaro jabs, although she says these are 'for my bloods' rather than weight loss specifically. Either way, a decade on, she's 3st lighter. 'I've turned into a clichéd menopausal woman who's never more than 10ft away from a pack of collagen and I feel better than I did at 35.' In other respects, in the course of her 15-year ascent, she has certainly become glossier, her hair no longer scraped back in the bun she adopted for the school run. Her skin — obviously — is glowing, but she's frank she's had some Botox and fillers ('No amount of skincare will stop you ageing or change the structure of your skin'). Most importantly, she says, she is now on hormone replacement therapy. 'That got me a life. I'm chill.'
She now tries to stay out of online arguments about, say, whether SPFs give you cancer ('I don't even hope people listen to me about that. I'm like, 'It's on you' '), but still doesn't shy from using Instagram to tackle causes bigger than pore size. Right now, she's fixated on abortion rights in the US. 'I was raging during the election because the Democrats were saying you've got to think about abortion from the perspective of a young girl who's been abused. No, you don't. You have to think about this from the perspective of women as human beings, not incubators. I've had four children, three miscarriages and one abortion. The whys and the wherefores are no one else's f***ing business.'
Yet, compared with most social media personalities I've met, Hirons is notably relaxed about the vast amount of trolling she receives. 'I saw a great quote. It's a bit inappropriate – 'If I haven't been inside you or you haven't been inside me, I don't care about your opinion.' That applies to my mum, my husband, my kids. If they thought I was a horrible person, I would think, oh God, I need to look at myself. But if some fat doris from Tunbridge Wells is pissed off because I said her cleanser wasn't very good, I'm not going to lose any sleep.'
Some potential Skin Rocks investors told her they would only fund her if she stopped blogging. 'I pushed back. That would be impossible. Imagine not being able to say, 'I'm so envious of this facemask — it's excellent'. It would be like having a limp.'
Others have questioned how Hirons can continue consulting for other brands (in her book, she recommends a handful of her own products, alongside plenty of her rivals'). 'I'm not going to suddenly say your brand is shit and mine's the best. You'd lose credibility. Do you think Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White only eat at their own restaurants?'
Teen Skincare by Caroline Hirons (HQ, £16.99) is published on June 19. To order a copy, go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free P&P on online orders over £25. Discount for Times+ members
Hair: Sydnie Bones using Sam McKnight. Make-up: Amelia Hunt at The Rae Agency using Make-up by Mario and Refy