She's heading up a multi-million pound business, raising three children, and managing to stay sane - so how does she do it?
Susan Taylor is an immaculately groomed, friendly and confident, mother of three, oh, and she's also the Managing Director of Elizabeth Arden.
The petite Susan Taylor set out to be a dancer but the summer before her course started, she was offered a job at Yardley cosmetics. A female boss took Susan under her wing and told Susan she could have a great career in beauty. She also mentioned the magic word – 'travel'.
'I was 19 and all I really wanted to do was see the world.'
The decision was made and Susan set off for a career in the beauty industry, 'In those days, business travel was none of this fly-in, fly-out the same day,' she says and enjoyed hospitality in Brazil, Bermuda, Japan, and Sardinia from proud locals keen to show off their country's generosity.
'By the end of the first year, I was hiding food under lettuce leaves to get through dinner.'
'Once I turned my mind to it, I wanted to be the best I could be,' says Susan who swiftly rose up the ranks. During this time, Susan met her husband and started a family. 'With your first child you're worried about everything,' she says, but this was also the time she was worrying about her career. 'I had to work really hard. My bosses weren't sympathetic to my having children so it was a balancing act.' They hired a full time nanny and her parents helped out, 'but it's never the same.'
'I would rush home from work for parents evening and then have to go back to the office straight after.'
They had two more children, and things became easier as she moved higher up, 'but was hard for the first born, I think she would say she found it difficult.'
Susan joined Elizabeth Arden in 1992 and became Managing Director. How has she managed it all? Susan is frank, 'I don't know.'
'I've got used to not having more than six hours sleep, and I know how to relinquish control when I walk through the door at home.'
'You can't address your kids the way you do a board meeting.' She ensures that her family spend time together by booking dates in the diary - 'it's the only way' - and is philosophical about the compromises involved with balancing work and home life.
'Happiness isn't easy. It avoids people and you have to work hard to achieve it.'
'I've been lucky. I make sure I have help and now I'm in a position where I am the boss, I try to be a lot more sympathetic to women with families.' Her deepest regret is not having spent enough time with her family as they were growing up. 'The worst thing was not being there for them. I wanted for them to feel that they could talk to me, but there was no guarantee that the time I was at home was the time they felt like opening up, especially in the teenage years. I could miss that one time they needed me and feel I'd let them down.' Susan is conscious about the effects of her industry on her children.
'There is a pressure to look a certain way and I didn't want my daughters to get negative messages about body image from me.'
To counter this, she makes sure that they sit down and eat together, and she's careful about what she projects: 'I wouldn't say 'I could do with losing some weight' in front of them'.
Does she feel there is more pressure on women today to look good than ever before? Susan treads carefully. 'The beauty industry strives to balance its presentation, but ultimately it's selling desire and aspiration.' She admits that it was easier in her mother's day, 'and I can't deny that some people do feel the pressure in the extreme.'
'We're moving towards a stage when women might start to take for granted that they'll have botox or an eyelift.'
'It's a shame when you lean towards normalising surgery. The pressure on Hollywood women must be huge, but then there are those older role models who don't look as though they've been overworked – Lauren Bacall, Susan Sarandon, who just have their own magnetism and style because of their years.'
'Some women may be trying too hard,' Susan admits: 'We need to get things into perspective, and the most important thing is well being and the satisfaction about feeling good about yourself.'
It's about celebrating being a woman - I really care about helping women and what I do
But she doesn't think that women should hit 40 and let go: 'you see some women who slap on their clothes, cut their hair short, and don't look like women any more. They've lost their femininity but they should celebrate being a woman.' This is the core of Susan's approach to her work. 'I really care about helping women, about what I do, and want to make it the best I can.' She believes that the beauty industry now has a better awareness of women past the age of 30. 'We have great role models that are older,' she says, 'and great products targeted specifically at women in their 50s.
'They are the baby boomer generation, who still have loads of energy and are looking terrific.'
'That has to be a positive image for the industry. They make women think, 'wow, I hope I look like her when I'm 50''. For all the thorny issues that the beauty industry faces, Susan remains optimistic. The future's bright, because for the first time, 'there's an increased awareness that you can be beautiful at any age.'
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