At 72, Isabel Walker Starts Fourth Career in Color Analysis After Analyst's Encouragement

Isabel Walker took her adult daughter out for her 36th birthday and sought something unusual and special. She accompanied her for a color analysis session. As the specialist draped swatches over her daughter's shoulders to assess the best fit for her skin tone, Walker offered input. "Because I know a bit about colour analysis. At one stage I was a beauty editor for a magazine," she said.

The analyst eventually turned to Walker. "She said: 'You should be doing this kind of work.' I said: 'Nonsense. I'm far too old. I'm 72.' But she wouldn't let it go. She said: 'You're born to do this,'" Walker recalled.

"All my life I've loved clothes. I've loved colour. I've always been a shopaholic," Walker said during a video call. She wore a blue patterned cardigan, and her fingernails were red. Strangers often ask her advice in fitting rooms. "And I just thought, why not? I took the plunge."

Earlier this year, Walker trained in color analysis to determine a person's season and the best of 16 sub-season palettes. Two months into her new business in Watford, Hertfordshire, she specializes in post-menopausal women and mother-and-daughter sessions.

This marks Walker's fourth career, all arising by accident through chance events, she said.

She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in north London and rebelled by rejecting religion. After university, she married a doctor and started as a journalist on a local paper in Nottingham, often covering health and medicine. She became health and beauty editor on Living magazine after stints as health correspondent for the Daily Mail and Sunday Telegraph.

Walker suffered severe preeclampsia in her first pregnancy, and her very premature baby did not survive. A doctor helped her through later pregnancies; they co-authored a book on preeclampsia and in 1992 co-founded the charity Action on Preeclampsia.

The charity and book serve as lasting memorials to the son she lost, Walker said. She has two adult children with her second husband.

After nearly a decade running the charity, she handed it to someone with greater fundraising experience. She then spent 15 years in communications skills training, sparked by a chance dinner party conversation.

"I have a philosophy that I never regret anything," Walker said. "I just say: OK, I've made the decision. Let's plough ahead. Let's not think about what I might have done instead or maybe it was a mistake."

Lately, she felt restless. Communications training work was declining, and she had no desire to slow down. "I love work," she said. "I'm 72 and way beyond retirement age, but I really don't want to retire because I can't think of anything that I particularly want to do that I can't already do in my spare time. I want my time to be filled. I feel like I've got as much energy as I had when I was in my 20s or 30s."

Color work has already changed her clients' views. People are not always the season they assumed. "The drapes tell the story, and they don't lie," Walker said. "It's an analytical process. It's about clothes and colour. But it's also about people. People are endlessly interesting. It gives me a huge kick. I can see the difference it makes to them."

Walker learned she is an autumn, not the winter advised in the 1980s when she wrote about color analysis. "That is a very important part of my identity now. I started wearing softer colours. Got rid of all my black. I think that people will now notice me rather than think: 'Oh, gosh, that's a bright dress she's wearing.' Suddenly I feel happier in my own skin."

She has made other changes. "I'm not going to buy very much, but I'm going to buy intentionally, sustainably, and be prepared to wear whatever I buy a lot."

"This is the future for me," she said. She does not rule out a fifth career. "Who's to say there isn't going to be another turning point and another opportunity that I'll just say yes to?"