Clive Owen on being the new face of Lancome

Resting after discovering the potato

“I would argue that this whole thing is not about vanity,” says Owen practically. “This is not plastic surgery, Botox or make-up, it’s just skin creams and aftershaves. I’m not standing up there saying, ‘I’m great and I’m so sexy and cool, and that’s why I am doing this.’ It’s more to do with acknowledging the way that the whole products-for-men thing is changing. Most guys I know do use moisturiser. In theatre and film, looking after your face is a pretty normal thing. It’s just business.”

Buying vintage: The pros and cons

Personally, my days of buying vintage are long behind me. In my early twenties everything I wore came from the second hand clothes boutiques in Kensington High Street antique market or Portobello Road, or, when I moved to Vancouver, a shop called Joe's Old Clothes. I would swan around the windy university campuses in 1930s bias cut evening dresses worn with Mary Quant purple opaque tights bought at Liberty, with no thought to occasion-appropriate and didn't own a single pair of jeans. I still dislike trousers and prefer dresses to anything else.

Here's a piece in which sort-of famous people give their tips on buying vintage:

'This Ossie Clark top is the first designer item I ever bought. I was 18 when I got it on the King's Road in London, and since then both my mum and my daughter Leah have tried to nick it from me. I stole it back eventually. Isn't it amazing that three generations of my family have worn it, and it's never gone out of style?'

'I found a handkerchief in the pocket of a pair of second-hand trousers, which really made me realise that I was wearing a dead man's trousers. Old clothes do have a kind of aura of death, but a good wash usually sorts them out.'

Thought for the day

I had always looked on my beauty as a curse, because I was regarded as a whore, rather than an actress. Now at least I understand that my beauty was a blessing. It was my lack of understanding the way to merchandise it that was the curse. Louise Brooks