Founder of Gossamer Skin, Terushka Venkatsamy is redefining the conversation around longevity through its core philosophy, Re-Engineering Youth™. Rejecting the notion of fighting time, the brand treats youth not as a restrictive age, but as an ongoing quality of aliveness. Through restorative daily rituals and intentional care, Gossamer Skin celebrates ageing as beauty in motion, inviting women to embrace self-trust, vitality, and power at every stage of life.
GLAMOUR: You’ve built a career across fashion, design, modelling, acting and entrepreneurship. What has each chapter taught you about being a woman in charge?
Terushka: My tenacity for expansion has continued to draw me from one realm into another; from fashion and design to modelling, travelling, acting and, ultimately, entrepreneurship. Living in all those worlds taught me not only what I wanted, but also what I was no longer willing to accept.
The great irony is that being a woman in charge has taught me to let go of control. As women, we often carry stories from childhood, adolescence and early womanhood that teach us to equate control with safety. We build defences, walls and survival mechanisms because we believe that if we can control the outcome, we can protect ourselves from disappointment. But true power began for me when I loosened that grip and returned to self-trust.
Leaving the familiarity of fashion to become an international model in my late thirties and forties, as a woman of colour entering an industry not traditionally carved out for women of my age, required surrender. Moving from modelling into acting required it again. Entrepreneurship has demanded it from me almost every day. Each chapter has taught me that being in charge does not mean forcing life into submission. It means knowing when to act, when to speak, when to lead and when to trust what is unfolding. The more I mastered the art of letting go, the more deeply I came into my own power.
GLAMOUR: What was the turning point that made you move from being fascinated by beauty and longevity to actually building Gossamer Skin?
Terushka: I wish I could say that Gossamer Skin began with rainbows and fairies, but it didn’t. It began with a jolt of pain. I had always been fascinated by beauty, vitality and longevity, particularly as I moved from my late thirties into my forties. I wanted more choices, something future-facing, empowering and beautifully integrated into my life. But the true turning point was an age-related remark made by someone I deeply cared for
and respected. It felt disproportionately cruel, and it struck a place inside me that instinctively revolted against the narrow, disempowering rules society so often places around women and ageing. That person was entitled to their perspective, but I did not have to make it my truth.
Pain can become a gift when we have the courage to enter its shadow and ask what it is trying to show us. What began as hurt became an investigation: What if ageing could carry an entirely different meaning? What if we could participate in our own vitality rather than feeling powerless before time? Initially, Gossamer Skin was not a business. It was deeply personal. I wanted beautiful, intentional products I could use in my own home, tools that felt restorative rather than demanding and gave something back to me rather than requiring more of me. Somewhere within that search, pain was alchemised into purpose, and the philosophy of Re-Engineering Youth™ was born.
GLAMOUR: You describe Gossamer Skin as being built around the philosophy of Re Engineering Youth. What does that mean to you, and how does it challenge the conventional conversation around ageing?
Terushka: To me, Re-Engineering Youth™ is a holistic philosophy. It is not the promise that one product will magically stop time. It is the understanding that youth is not merely an age, it is a quality of aliveness. We Re-Engineer Youth through the way we think, love, move, nourish ourselves and engage with life. It lives in strength, curiosity, sensuality, laughter, play, meaningful connection and the small acts of care through which we return to ourselves. It can be dancing in the kitchen, listening to ’90s R&B while walking down the street, spending time in nature or making heart-shaped pancakes after a terrible day simply to remind yourself that love still exists.
Gossamer Skin gives that philosophy a physical ritual. Those five or seven minutes in the morning are sacred to me. They are time to pause, breathe, lift, sculpt, awaken my senses and reconnect with myself before the demands of the day begin. The ritual may support how I want my skin to look, but it also changes how I inhabit myself.
The conventional conversation often presents ageing as a binary: either surrender to ‘decline’ or wage war against time. I reject both. We don’t chase youth; we re-engineer it. We reclaim its most beautiful qualities: energy, openness, pleasure and possibility, at every age.
Ageing is not something to reverse. It is something to reimagine. Ageing is beauty in motion.
GLAMOUR: At 45, how has your relationship with beauty changed from when you were younger?
It is like the sun and the moon. When I was younger, beauty was something I searched for outside myself. I looked for it in people, places, achievements and validation: in being selected, admired or chosen. The danger in handing society the keys to your value is that you also give it the power to devalue you.
My relationship with beauty has since moved from searching to knowing, from craving to embodiment.
That does not mean I wake up every morning feeling completely confident. It means my fundamental worth is no longer negotiated through somebody else’s gaze. I can enjoy fashion, beauty, sensuality and being seen without asking those things to prove that I am enough. There is a quietness that arrives when you come home to yourself. Beauty stops feeling like something you must chase, win or protect. It becomes a way of inhabiting your own life.
Today, I understand beauty as far more than appearance. It is discernment. It is vitality. It is the way a woman carries everything she has survived without allowing it to harden the sweetest parts of her. There is a silent beauty that begins to follow you when you no longer need the world to confirm what you have finally recognised within yourself.
GLAMOUR: You speak about being pro-ageing rather than anti-ageing. Why was it important for you to create a philosophy that embraces both ageing naturally and wanting to enhance how you look and feel?
So much of being human is about holding apparently contradictory truths. I can feel defeated and still try again. I can be sad and still give love. I can feel uncertain, put on lipstick and reconnect with my confidence. I can be soft and powerful, nurturing and assertive, an empath and a woman with uncompromising boundaries. Why should ageing be any different?
Gossamer Skin is pro-ageing with anti-ageing benefits because I believe acceptance and enhancement can live harmoniously. Anti-ageing does not have to mean being anti-age. It does not have to be about correction or rejection; it can be about enhancement and care.
I can look into the mirror and say, “You are already enough,” while still choosing to exercise, nourish myself, use beautiful skincare, cultivate my vitality and care about how I look and feel. Wanting to enhance yourself does not automatically mean you dislike yourself. Loving yourself does not require abandoning desire.
This philosophy is also intentionally inclusive. Every person should be free to make their own beauty choices without shame or moral hierarchy. Re Engineering Youth™ is not a prescription for how anyone should age. It is an invitation to remain connected to your power, beauty and becoming, whatever your age and whatever choices you make along the way.
GLAMOUR: Gossamer Skin was born from a deeply personal experience. How did you transform something painful into the foundation for something so empowering?
Terushka: I never imagined that I would one day be brave or perhaps fortunate enough to answer this question. The original pain was one thing, but what followed was even more difficult. I experienced burnout that developed into PTSD. I was afraid to fall asleep and afraid to be awake. I did not know where to go inside my own body. There were days when it genuinely felt as though I was living in hell.
But somewhere inside that darkness, a small question remained: What if I try? What if I leave the house and take a walk? What if I cross the street? What if I enter a supermarket? What if I do one thing today that reminds me I am still alive? I took one walk, came home exhausted and cried. The next day, I tried something else. I breathed, listened, learned and became almost obsessive about understanding the skin, body, nutrition and the relationship between our internal and external lives. I remember feeling the sun on my skin one day and realising that I could experience pleasure again.
I began to imagine each small act of self-love as a vessel of light through that hell. If I created enough of them, perhaps they would eventually illuminate a path out of that darkness.
That is how something painful became empowering. Not through one dramatic breakthrough, but through hundreds of small choices that gradually rebuilt self trust. Those acts wove themselves into a safety net beneath me, and Gossamer Skin was ultimately built upon that foundation.
GLAMOUR: You’ve described self-love as a series of small acts that eventually become self-trust. What does practising self-love look like for you in your everyday life?
Terushka: I’m not going to give a pretty answer. The truest test of self-love is not how I treat myself when everything is going well. It is how I respond when the deck of cards is falling, when I feel unheard, unseen, unwelcome or unable to find myself. In those moments, self-love begins with small acts of kindness: taking a walk, making tea or matcha, running a bath, breathing, cooking something beautiful or giving my body the rest it is asking for. These gestures may appear insignificant, but each one says, “I am still here, and I am not abandoning you.” Self-love also required me to sharpen my discernment to the amount of absorption of another persons projection placed upon me.
Sometimes self-love is soft. Sometimes it is a boundary. Sometimes it is leaving, releasing, beginning again or accepting that something I care for or love is no longer aligned for me.
The deepest form of self-love is giving myself the power of choice. Every time I listen to myself and act in alignment with what I know, I deposit another piece of evidence into my relationship with myself. Eventually, those repeated acts become self-trust.
GLAMOUR: There’s a beautiful idea in your philosophy that we can be grateful for who we are while still desiring more for ourselves. How do you reconcile acceptance with ambition?
Terushka: Gratitude is the root; desire is the branches. I am deeply ambitious. I have high expectations of myself, and expansion is part of my nature. But I also know the voice that says I am behind, that everything should be moving faster and that what I have done is still not enough. I call that voice my evil stepmother haha! . She once tried to keep me safe through pressure and perfectionism, but there comes a time when that voice needs to be quietened and led through another voice of pure upliftment and enoughness. Acceptance does not mean the absence of desire, and ambition does not have to be fuelled by self-rejection. I can honour where I am while remaining devoted to where I am going.
When fear and urgency begin to take over, I return to the body. Sometimes I use 4-7-8 breathing: inhaling for four counts, holding for seven and exhaling for eight. The extended exhalation helps settle the body’s stress response and creates enough internal space for clearer thought. It reminds me that I do not have to solve my entire life from within one overwhelmed moment.
Then I return to the next honest action.
That is how I reconcile the two: I root myself in gratitude and allow desire to reach outward. My ambition can grow from love, possibility and purpose, not from the belief that I must achieve something before I am worthy.
GLAMOUR: Your “powerhouse duos” include ideas such as softness and power, gratitude and desire, and mercy and boundaries. Which of these dualities has been the most transformative for you personally?
Terushka: Mercy and boundaries, without question.
When someone or something we love breaks our trust, it can leave us psychologically suspended inside the event. We replay it, question ourselves and sometimes allow the wound to become our identity. The shift happens when we move from victimhood into authorship- not by denying what happened, but by deciding what meaning it will have in the rest of our lives. Mercy has allowed me to understand that people frequently act through their own fear, shame, pain and unhealed wounds. That understanding can move me from difficult emotions towards empathy, but it does not require me to condone their behaviour.
That is where the boundary enters.
Mercy says, “I understand that you are human.” The boundary says, “But I will not continue to abandon myself in order to accommodate what hurts me.” Mercy does not mean unlimited access. Forgiveness does not require continued participation. I can love someone and still leave. I can understand someone and still say no. I can wish someone healing without making myself responsible for providing it. That duality has set me free. Mercy softens the story so it no longer poisons me; boundaries ensure that I do not keep returning to the place that wounded me.
What has entrepreneurship taught you about confidence-particularly the kind of confidence that doesn’t need external validation?
Terushka: Entrepreneurship has taught me that things are possible and that we are the possibility.
There is a particular kind of confidence born from taking an idea that exists only inside you and slowly giving it form. Every decision, mistake, risk and breakthrough becomes evidence that you can meet the unknown. You stop waiting for someone else to sign off on your capabilities.
So often we hand another person the pen and ask them to certify our worth. We hope they will keep choosing us, praising us or fuelling us with enough confidence to continue. Entrepreneurship eventually takes that pen out of their hands.
It has taught me to trust what I can see before anybody else sees it. To keep building when there is no applause. To continue when the outcome is uncertain and nobody is watching. That does not mean I never feel frightened. Confidence is not the absence of fear or sadness. Sometimes it is simply the quiet knowledge, even while you are crying, that you will find a way forward.
Dreaming, actioning and building something meaningful instil us with two of the greatest gifts a human being can possess: possibility and hope. Confidence, for me, is knowing that everything can work out, and trusting that I will still belong to myself even when it does not work out exactly as planned.
GLAMOUR: Building a luxury beauty and longevity business requires both vision and resilience. What has been the most challenging part of being the woman in charge?
Terushka: The most challenging part has been learning to be the rock for everything while remaining a safe place for myself.
A founder is the heartbeat of a business. You hold the vision, the creative direction, the decisions, the relationships, the problems and the emotional meaning behind what you are building. Even when you feel overwhelmed or uncertain, people still look to you for clarity. As a woman, I have also had to reconcile my natural instinct to nurture with the necessity of speaking clearly and assertively. Women are often rewarded for silence and punished for speaking. Entrepreneurship forced me to heal my relationship with my own voice, to stop confusing kindness with self-erasure and leadership with hardness. There are days when my mind asks, “Why did I begin this?” My faith answers, “Because there is purpose in it.”
The challenge is to feel the full weight of uncertainty without surrendering to it: to walk into the unknown, remain rooted in faith and continue taking action. Sometimes I move like lightning; sometimes I move like slow-moving honey. Both are still movements. I am no longer fighting for a seat at somebody else’s table. I am building my own and creating enough room for others to sit beside me.
GLAMOUR: How do you define success at this stage of your life, and has that definition changed as you’ve evolved?
Terushka: At this stage of my life, success is accountability. It is showing up despite resistance, disappointment, failure and difficulty. It is doing the thing I told myself I would do, particularly when it would be easier not to. But success is also peace. The luxury of peace has never meant more to me than it does now. I feel most successful when I am peaceful, loving and in a state of flow, not only when life is easy, but when I can remain connected to myself while moving through difficulty.
Success is extending the hand and extending the table. It is inclusion. It is being able to share, teach, help, create opportunities and add something meaningful to another person’s life. I have never experienced success as purely “I” or “me.” Its deepest expression has always lived in “we” and “us.” The foundation of that has been inside me since I was young. Even when I had very little, I wanted to expand the lives of the people around me. What has changed is my clarity. I now understand that peace, faith, accountability and contribution are not secondary rewards that follow success. They are success. If something I create generates inspiration, possibility or a renewed sense of dignity in somebody else, that feels like the most beautiful passing of the baton. That is also why Gossamer Skin’s commitment to beauty with purpose matters so deeply to me.
GLAMOUR: You’ve spoken about vitality as extending far beyond skincare. What are the things that make you feel most alive now?
Terushka: I feel most alive whenever I reconnect with my innate sense of freedom. Freedom does not necessarily mean boarding a plane, travelling wherever I want or living without limitations. For me, freedom is no longer being imprisoned inside a difficult emotion. It is knowing that contrast can exist, that I can experience disappointment and still find joy, endure difficulty and still recognise what is beautiful, feel grief and still remain open to love.
Vitality lives in those moments. It is the power of peace and faith existing alongside uncertainty. It is finding pleasure in the mundane: sunlight on my skin, movement, music, cooking, touching grass, laughing unexpectedly or noticing something beautiful in the middle of an ordinary day. It is believing wholeheartedly in love; in the way I move, in what I create, in what I touch and in every breath I take.
Skincare can be part of that vitality because a ritual can return us to our senses, but vitality is ultimately the life force with which we inhabit ourselves. It is luminous from the inside out. I feel alive when I can experience the full emotional spectrum of being human without allowing one painful moment to become the definition of my entire life. Freedom is not the absence of difficulty. It is discovering that even within difficulty, I still have access to myself.
GLAMOUR: For women who are entering their 40s and beyond and may feel pressure to fight the signs of ageing, what would you like them to know about beauty, desire and becoming?
Terushka: I would tell them that anything is possible at any age.
You have the ability to change your mind, your life and your direction. You can reinvent yourself, restructure your thinking and renew your relationship with your beauty. It begins with one decision to love yourself a little more than you did five minutes ago, and then making that decision again, particularly after you
fall. The language of “fighting” ageing creates unnecessary resistance. Ageing is already a natural process. We can allow it to unfold while still having a plan, caring for ourselves and enhancing the beauty that is already ours. You do not have to wage war against your reflection to remain invested in it.
Beauty travels far beyond the external; it reaches every layer of our inner lives. Care for your internal world and it will reveal itself externally. Care for the external alongside the internal, and you become extraordinarily powerful. Desire is not something women should have to surrender with age. It is life force, our appetite for touch, taste, sensuality, creativity, adventure, pleasure and expansion. Connect with it. Reimagine it. Allow it to evolve with you. And remember that you are not becoming only at twenty-five. You are becoming in every moment. Getting older, maturing, ageing… it’s not an ending or a diminishing. It can be the beginning of a life built with greater discernment, freedom, beauty and truth.
GLAMOUR: If the woman you are today could speak to the younger Terushka who was still figuring out who she was, what would you tell her?
Terushka: I would tell her, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I’m going to keep you safe.”
I would tell her that she is doing the right thing by walking away. That it is okay to leave. Change your mind. Bend the rules. Break the rules if you must and then create new ones that feel like truth. Follow your instincts. They know the way. Your path is already illuminated; all you have to do is trust it enough to take the next step. People often ask what we would tell our younger selves, but I sometimes wonder what my 75 year-old self would want my 45 year-old self to know. I imagine she would say exactly the same thing I would say to the woman I was at twenty five: “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. You are safe. You are going to be okay. Keep going forward.”
There is something deeply comforting about realising that the wisdom travels in both directions. We can reach backwards and care for the younger versions of ourselves who never heard the words they needed, while allowing the women we are still becoming to reach back for us. Perhaps that is what coming home to yourself feels like. Like a ship that has travelled through darkness finally seeing the light of the lighthouse, not because the ocean has become still, but because it remembers where it belongs. And maybe that is the most beautiful truth I have learnt: through every age, every reinvention and every unknown, we are not only finding our way home. We are becoming the light that guides us there.
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