The 52-year-old domestic goddess appears on the cover of this month’s British Vogue magazine wearing practically no makeup.
In a jade green lace Burberry Prorsum dress that compliments her pale skin and dark features, the domestic goddess looks out from the cover directly and unflinchingly.
Her world seemed to unravel last year after her then husband Charles Saatchi was seen clutching her throat in a London restaurant and was followed by a very public and acrimonious divorce. Later, a court case in which two personal assistants were accused of fleecing Lawson and Saatchi of £685,000 exposed her use of cocaine and cannabis.
But the Vogue cover appears to be a public relations signal that Nigella is making a “fresh start” and looking towards the future.
“I was terrified of being photographed without make-up,” Lawson says in the piece, “and I hate having my looks talked up. It always makes me feel I’m going to be a disappointment in the flesh.”
The magazine has stated that she is wearing a dab of blusher and a coat of mascara on her lashes. The image has also benefitted from a “little retouching, as we do with all cover images. Oddly given that she is a woman in her fifties, less than some people decades younger”.
Lawson’s future plans include a new venture into the world of digital. “I’ve been working – in a cottage-industry way – on an app, which, if it works, could be deeply thrilling.”
“I love what I do, but there are other parts of my brain that I haven’t flexed in a professional way,” Lawson told Vogue. “I do sometimes think that I’ve let the more analytical part of my brain slump slightly. I do like writing about food, but there’s so much that interests me …”
