My friend Corinne is a German businesswoman in her fifties. She is a managing director in one of the Europe’s leading steel producers and she runs her own bakery chain on the side. And I have mad respect for her, not just because of her achievements, but because of her mad stylishness skillz. I am not using her pics nor her real name because she’d bite my head off if she learned this. But she is one of my real-life inspos!

@sommerswim: She’s strong firm, pretty, dresses fashionably and has a classy bob. She has claimed to be fifty, but she looks slightly older than me – a millennial after her 30.We’ve met at the gym – while I was trying to lose my weight, she was trying to preserve her figure.

I asked her how does she look so amazing? Well, she restrains herself. First of all, she will never eat junk food. She was raised in a different, less Westernized times, and she has an allergy to American-style fast food. She is not a great cook – but all she eats should be at least home-cooked. She is restrained enough to eat fresh fruit over processed ones, for breakfast and nuts as a snack. She has a very stressful job but she does not, of course, smoke, and instead of coffee she has tea. Her two weaknesses are chocolate – mostly for magnesium, and lollipops since they’re pure glucose (and so it’s easy to burn the calories) and the sugar can act as an emergency energy boost in the times of stress.

You’d expect a powerful executive to wear sky-high stilettos, right? Well, the facts are that Corinne doesn’t wear heels higher than 1 inch. She’s far shorter than me, but her personality shows! Likewise, she always wears a bra, taking it only for going to sleep, and well, her breasts are enough to draw the attention of the guys half her age! I don’t know how much she earns, but she always dresses to the nines – I’ve seen her in power suits with trousers and skirts, and in the winter she wears thick waterproof wool and cashmere coats.

She doesn’t overuse make-up, but she says that “sadly, at my age, it’s a must”. She has recommended Guerlain powder pearls to me and I kept advice and has a seemingly infinite supply of lipsticks in her purse. Corinne tends to wear modestly long nails, always painted and filed to perfection. I mean, sorry for gushing about her but basically Corinne is who I want to be when I grow up!