Tomorrow spoke to UK TV fashion stylist Nicky Hambleton-Jones to find out how a retreat in the Algarve could change your perspective on ageing.
Want to look ten years younger? Portugal-based health coach and yoga teacher Vicki Snow has teamed up with friend and colleague UK TV fashion stylist Nicky Hambleton-Jones to help women over forty reevaluate their lives and their looks.
Following the success of the first 10 Years Younger retreat in March, a second is taking place from 10–13 October at Quinta Dos Perfumes near Tavira. I ask if this course was designed for me and they laugh. “It’s not just you that feels like this; it’s everyone over 40. We are in this together.”
Vicki Snow was a fashion PR in London when she met Nicky, the brand ambassador for several retail brands. Although Vicki still dabbles in PR, in the Algarve she has reinvented herself as a life coach, teaching yoga and offering advice on nutrition, hormones and fitness. South African-born Nicky Hambleton-Jones studied dietetics before starting her private practice in Cape Town. After a postgraduate business course at Wits Business School, she moved to London in 1996, where she worked as a marketing consultant in the city.
Being interviewed about dealing with redundancy in 2001 led to Nicky’s first foray into presenting. She was approached by television companies, but nothing was commissioned. It was only after she founded the personal stylist consultancy NHJ Style that she was asked to do a screen test for a new Channel 4 show. Nicky began presenting 10 Years Younger in 2003. “When something is your purpose, it finds you. It came to me,” she told me. She now lives in London with her husband Robert and their two children and has published four books.
In May, Nicky returned to our television screens with a new slot, Drop a Decade, on the popular daytime TV show This Morning. It returns in September. “It’s basically another version of 10 Years Younger,” she tells me. “We have not had any transformation shows for a long time. It all died a death, and went to baking! But it’s back as it gives a feel-good factor. People love the before and after; women look at it and think they can do that. Trust me, whoever you are and however you feel, I can make you look amazing.”
I am chomping at the bit to get some tips on looking amazing. Incidentally, it’s the school holidays and I am dialling in from a campsite, looking like I have been dragged through several hedges backwards. Nicky looks fab-u-lous and effortlessly stylish. She is wearing a vivid red blouse and her signature glasses and has a flawless complexion and glossy locks. She looks great without looking as if she is trying too hard. Given her job, I wonder if she feels pressure to always look good. “I love getting dressed every day and putting on lipstick. It’s the way I am,” she tells me. I was glad to hear she had been on a family holiday in the Italian mountains the previous week, where she had to let her presentation slip for a week!
During the retreat, Nicky leads a style masterclass when she speaks about invisibility and how to be bolder. “Everything we wear is driven by how we feel in our heads. My midlife clients are saying, ‘I look invisible now’. They feel like society is judging them. I coach my clients that it is not society. There is no external judgement. You have made yourself invisible. You stop doing the things you always invested your time in. As you get older and hormones kick in, you start feeling low. Subconsciously, you make different choices. You dull down the colour choices. You may have gained weight around your stomach, so you try to make yourself invisible by picking clothes that don’t stand out. We are all limited by the stories we tell ourselves in our heads. I try to rip the bandaid off. The shape we are shouldn’t limit the choices we make. I teach people how to be bolder.”
Vicki adds, “I work with emotions through yoga. Mindset and emotions are also very important. You will negatively impact yourself if you have the mindset that ‘it all goes downhill from here’. You need to out the thoughts that aren’t helpful. Thought creates feelings that drive our actions. We help you to change what you want to change and choose (because it is 100% your choice) how you want to look and feel for the rest of your life. Many women have one thing that is getting them down, like weight gain, but you need to look at it holistically.”
She approaches the issue from a yoga perspective: “If you get into the right place mentally, then the energy flows with you. You need to approach it mindfully. Many women just focus on weight loss, but if you balance your hormones, exercise and diet, weight will take care of itself.”
Nicky explains that often, women of a certain age get into a negative cycle of self-sabotage, making them feel worse about themselves. “When you are in a low emotional place, you eat badly. Lots of people are in this cycle. When you feel your worst, you put on your worst outfit, eat more or have a cake. I tell people, when you feel like that, put on your best outfit. It will make you think differently and others feel differently. Just wear the shorts or that figure-hugging dress!”
One woman changed her whole mindset after the retreat. “This lady had a challenging family situation caring for sons with disabilities,” recalls Nicky. “She had put on lots of weight and she was broken by life. She had never put herself first and didn’t know anything about anything. She was so open to everything we taught her. She implemented the skin routine and makeup and changed how she dressed. She embraced everything. Although her personal situation is not ideal, she feels like she has regained control.”
The March retreat in a gorgeous orange grove was Nicky’s first, and she loved it. “After the event, I had to lie down in a dark room! It’s full-on, from first thing in the morning to sunset yoga on the beach. Then I will often be up until midnight talking to people and then it starts again at 8 am. But it is so rewarding.” Nicky has visited the Algarve many times and considers it much like South Africa in terms of its beaches and weather. “There is something about going to the sunshine if you are doing a retreat. Being in a different environment helps you relax differently. The female bonding at the retreat is amazing.”
The retreat takes place twice a year, in spring and autumn, at Quinta Dos Perfumes. Up to seventeen guests participate in workshops on nutrition for those who want it, although they are keen to stress that this is not a diet camp, hormone balancing, style, and body confidence. Celebrity hairstylist Andrew Barton will be giving a hair masterclass at the October retreat. There is also daily yoga and meditation with Vicki and “hormone-supporting” meals prepared by a private chef. Erica’s Comfort Zone Concepts will give a make-up masterclass and offer other treatments.
Wow! I have found this interview one of my favourites yet! Everything they said resonated with me. Today, I am starting to save for their next retreat and going to dig out that animal print jumpsuit I haven’t worn for years!
nhjstyle.mykajabi.com/10-years-younger-retreat
