The late Baroness Thatcher's approach to diet and beauty is still relevant today as it ever was.
In a 1979 interview with The Sun newspaper, Margaret Thatcher said: "there is a nonsense about intelligent women not being beautiful. There is no genetic link between brains and beauty. Most women are far more intelligent than people give them credit for."
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It seems that Thatcher controlled her beauty regime more seriously than she might have been given credit for.
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She watched her weight closely. "I just try to eat little. For breakfast often I have nothing but coffee with a dash of milk. Now and then I eat chocolates, but I find it hard to stop at one. It's often best, you know: to do without completely. You can't indulge. It will sit on your hips," Thatcher was quoted as saying.
And her beauty regime, although no-nonsense, began early. "From my teens I've looked after my skin. I never use soap and water on it, although I come from a very soap-and-water minded family. However late and however tired. I use cleanser to get the make-up off, and then a good moisturiser."
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As for her make-up kit: never any nail varnish; pale, velvet skin and often a slick of power lipstick. Thatcher has "the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula," the late French President François Mitterrand once famously said.
But it's her hair that is perhaps her biggest beauty legacy. In a recent survey by Fabriah.com ,Margaret Thatcher's hairstyle was voted the fifth most influential hairstyle in the last fifty years.
When asked in the 1979 interview about her 'power hair' she responded: "I've tinted my hair - it's naturally mid-brown - for years," she said. "Now I have a rinse on the temple, where it's going grey." And it was reported that she often wrote ahead to British ambassadors to request a good local hairdresser, who used heated Carmen rollers (her favourite) on her international trips.
IN PICTURES: Hair trends for autumn/winter 2013
Her set and curl will continue to shape the way we wear our hair too. Next season it returns under the direction of stylists who worked backstage at Vivienne Westwood's autumn/winter 2013 show, but with a oversized, sculpted effect that is synonymous with Thatcherite beauty.
Hair inspired by Margaret Thatcher at Vivienne Westwood's autumn/winter 2013 show. Photo: Vladimir Potop
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