Author, columnist and fashion journalist Maggie Alderson loves a good beauty buy as much as a well-honed phrase.

Now, as she launches her tenth novel The Scent of You, she discusses finally finding a product to soothe her rosacea-stricken skin, the scent of her mother’s lipstick and rereading an old favourite – and hating it.

What’s thrilling

I am excited about the French brand Avène ... the value for money is amazing, the quality is incredible and the prices are so reasonable. I have terrible rosacea – life-affectingly bad – and Avène doesn’t irritate my skin. There’s pimple cream for old ladies with rosacea (Avène Cleanance Expert, from $22, priceline.com.au) which completely helps, and their moisturisers are lovely.

When I used to go to Paris for the fashion shows, I used to bring back a suitcase full of the stuff. Now I can buy it in the UK which is life-changingily brilliant for me [available at Priceline and Chemist Warehouse in Australia]. Avène’s Antirougeurs Calm Soothing Repair Mask (from $35, priceline.com.au) is absolutely fantastic. It calms my poor ravaged face.

I’m really excited about my own book ... I’m normally suffering from some kind of English stupid modesty and embarrassment when I have a book coming out and I’m always like “Sorry, I wrote this little book!” But this one, I’m really proud of it. I think the cover is the most beautiful cover on a book, it captured everything I wanted the book to be. Unlike any other novel I’ve written, it’s got a very particular theme of perfume in it. [My books] usually have an emotional theme like addiction or a terrible father. I had the idea about 18 months ago, it was really like a light bulb moment, so I’m thrilled [with how it has turned out].

What’s nostalgia-inducing

I still sniff my mother’s lipstick. I am visiting my mother in her retirement vilage and just yesterday I was having a sniff. They don’t smell quite the same, that yummy lipstick smell that I remember so clearly as a child. Every Christmas I give her a Chanel lipstick, it’s one of our rituals. She’s more into corals than I am, but definitely not red.

I remember vividly reading Pride and Prejudice. It has really become a thing, but when I was 12, I’d never heard of Jane Austen. It was just lying around at home, it had this really weird cover with women in bonnets on it and one day I picked it up when I was really bored. I read the first sentence and didn’t understand it. I read it three times and suddenly understood that really famous first sentence. I was amazed: “Oh my god, it’s an old book but it’s funny.”

That was a revelation that an old book could also be funny and have hot guys in it. I felt incredibly up myself that I managed to read a book from the olden days. It gave me the courage to try others. I was just starting to think boys were an interesting idea so it was a revelation to think people in olden days could’ve thought the same.

What I keep going back to

My old faithful when it comes to beauty ... is Eve Lom Cleanser (from $72, mecca.com.au). I’ve used it since about 1989. I do occasionally use other things, but I always go back to Eve because it’s just a miraculous product. I do have a genuine sentimental attachment. I used to have facials with Eve in a really crummy basement so it was amazing to see her become this international brand from this little shop. It’s so rich and soothing; if you’ve been on a flight and your face feels like a prune, it’s just so succulent.

I’m a very rare rereader ...because I’ve had the experience of rereading something that was a life experience when I was young – then I read it again and thought, “What is this shit?” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights: as an adult I was like, “Really three narrators? Get it together girl, where’s your editor?” So I’m very careful what I reread.

The books I will reread ... are Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. I reread those and I’m never disappointed, they are my safest rereads. They’re hilarious, they have such a confidence to them, it’s the humour. The Pursuit of Love is not really a novel at all but somehow she turns it into a novel. [The Mitfords] were appalling snobs. I went through a stage where I was obsessed, but I got over that Mitford fandom very quickly – but those two books I love.

Come to think of it, I haven’t reread them for 15 years but maybe next time I reread them I won’t like them that much. I had such a terrible experience with Wuthering Heights so I won’t go near anything I loved so much. I couldn’t bear to have them spoiled.





• The Scent of You by Maggie Alderson is out now through Harper Collins

