Mary Spillane is that particular type of gutsy American who has lived most of her adult life in Europe and has learned to love it without letting go of that outgoing enthusiasm that either charms or drives more phlegmatic Europeans demented. At 49, she looks more like 39, and seems to enjoy her own little flourishes of extravagance - buying a multicoloured, Irish-wool rug to wrap around her flimsy yellow cardigan-and-jumper ensemble on a blustery day in Dublin and indulging in fresh scones, jam and cream in the Shelbourne Hotel of a Friday afternoon.
There is no doubt she is pleased with her latest project, a book called Ultra Age, which is essentially an Everywoman's guide to facing the future, written with health journalist Victoria McKee.
As founder of the European division of the image consultancy, Colour Me Beautiful, Spillane is first and foremost a hugely successful businesswoman. She is also a working mother, married to an English investment banker, with two teenage daughters, who has observed and experienced many of the dilemmas faced by this generation of women which, having broken the mould by staying in the workplace, is not prepared to shrivel up and die just because its children are about to become adults.
"I'm already mourning the day my children will leave but it doesn't make me the least bit sad that when I walk down the street with my daughter, it's she who has heads turning, not me.
It doesn't upset me because I'm confident in who I am," says Spillane in her matter-of-fact way, which makes you believe she has swallowed a lot of her own advice wholesale.
Conscious she is of a different generation and disposition to the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, Spillane feels she and others of her age (who want to look good, work effectively and still have a life) need some guidance to move forward.
"I'm increasingly feeling many of the women I work with are reaching a hiatus, a brick wall. They don't know what's on the other side and they can't move forward without prodding," she says. But aren't books like this feeding into women's insecurities about themselves? For instance, do we really need cosmetic surgery in our 40s to survive in the working world of the next century? Shouldn't we all just be getting on as well as we can rather than reaching for the latest "bail me out" manual to life? "We are part of an information age. We need to know more and we don't want to go through the different stages of our lives blindly," Spillane answers.
Ultra Age is written, according to Spillane, for the woman in the street - not for models with highmaintenance lives. Women - like it or not - will never be happy again by excelling in solely one domain (work, mothering, homemaking) and we - she believes - need help, advice and support to keep (or at least try to keep) all the balls in the air as we proceed through the decades of life.
Drawing on some of their own life-experiences along the way (including a diary and brutally honest close-up photography of Spillane's facelift), Spillane and McKee begin by charting various highs and lows of each decade. The book is packed with advice, suggestions and tips on staying healthy, eating and exercising well, looking good, keeping mentally alert, spiritually tuned in and sexually satisfied through the menopause and beyond. The tone is chatty and the chapter headings throughout make it ideal for dipping in and out. There are the inevitable makeovers, which are always a curiosity in themselves, and there is as much emphasis on health as on beauty and style. Taking good care of yourself is the first and most effective way of taking control of your life, Spillane says, and the rest of her advice is based on that premise.
Meanwhile, she is already researching her next book (about creating and building your own brand) while continuing with her media-training, sales promotion, politicians' speech-writing, performance coaching, cross-cultural communications skills . . . "I keep learning all the time. If you are confident enough in yourself and you are good with people, you can help them and that's worth something," she says in a mission-statement sort of way.
And then, there's a life of her own to live. Following this interview and an image consultation with 250 women in one of Dublin's plushest hotels ("Looking for life-changing advice?"), she's off to get some dirt under her nails at her second home, a farm in the English countryside. The task in hand? To plant a bamboo hedge.
Ultra-cool ageing or what?
Ultra Age - Everywoman's Guide to Facing the Future by Mary Spillane and Victoria McKee is published by Macmillan, price £20 in the UK