LIBBY ARMSTRONG WAS about to go back to her marketing job with an international bank in Hong Kong. But after 18 months of caring for two small children, she felt her look needed a boost.
Through friends, she heard about image consultant Alexandra Menzel, so she signed up for a personal overhaul.
'She'd been a consultant for a couple of friends of mine and they looked fabulous,' Armstrong says from Singapore, where she now lives. 'These were people I'd known for years and I was looking at them and thinking, what have they done?'
Armstrong, 37, says Menzel showed her how to apply makeup ('The last time I learnt how to I was 15') and forced her to throw out her Hermes scarf collection. 'She said they made me look like a 60-year-old - and she's right.'
Menzel, who trained as a makeup artist in her native Germany and London, has been in Hong Kong for 10 years and runs an image consultancy from her home in Clear Water Bay. The mother-of-three says that being an image consultant is her passion.
She also runs courses for large companies that want to improve the image of senior employees. 'The most important thing for them is feeling confident and comfortable with their own image, within guidelines that are appropriate,' she says.