Stephanie Darling - Secrets of a Beauty Queen

To begin at the beginning, I would like to thank my beloved mother, Yolande Munn, for her exceptional vocabulary and stellar mothering skills - in the reverse order of course. To my husband, Mark Darling, for having the best surname and for taking me away for our well-earned 25th wedding anniversary on a cruise from Venice to Singapore, travelling old style. The sea days on our verandah gave me the space and time to finish this book. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. To my adored family: Harrison, Jonah, Linden, Isabel and Louis. Thank you for having faith in me and being quietly proud. Thank you to Michele Neil who saved my life, literally, almost four years ago (theres another book in that). And thank you to all the truly amazing and inspiring editors and teams who I have worked with as well as the incredible PRs and beauty companies who have been at my constant beck and call. And to all those practitioners who have laid hands on me and given me so much to write about as well as holding back the hands of time.

To Marion Hume for making it all happen by setting me on my beauty path when I was at Vogue and to the legendary Pat Ingram who continues to watch over and care for me in my current role as beauty director at Fairfax. A huge thank you to my wonderful agent at Curtis Brown, Grace Heifetz (and to Priscilla Nielsen who introduced me), who navigated me through the process with so much care and love and helped make me a published author with the awesome Penguin Random House. Thank you to Kirsten Abbott for believing in me in the first place and to Sarah Fairhall for sensitively editing my book and making it what it is today.

Thank you to my dear Sherine Youssef, who read my book as each chapter unfolded and was my appropriateness monitor. To Shona Martyn, who has been my lifelong mentor and friend since I was a puppy journalist in my first job at Vogue, thank you for always being there. And last but by no means least to the gorgeous beauty poss many of whom have become my much-loved friends.

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First Published By Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017

Text copyright Stephanie Darling 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Cover and text design by Adam Laszczuk Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

Author photograph Justin Ridler

penguin.com.au

ISBN: 978-1-76014-205-6

For my
darling sons,
Harrison
&
Jonah,
who are
my greatest
beauty
creations.