When I first shook hands with supermodel-turned-makeup maven Lauren Hutton, she had a scowl on her face and a crisp, unsmiling manner.

But she had a good reason. Like the rest of us, Lauren Hutton has better things to be doing than working.

"I hate it. I loathe it!" admitted Hutton, 62, of her newfound career when we had tea together earlier this week. She'd rather be dog sledding, she says, or deep sea diving.

"I like adventure and I've got a big jones," she said in her famous sexy, husky voice, warming up as a cup of sweet tea arrived. She soon began recounting the good ol' days, when she travelled six months of every year to the world's wildest locations between high-paying modelling jobs.

Hutton was perhaps the world's first supermodel when she became famous in the 1960s for her gap-toothed smile. She appeared on more than 25 magazine covers and was the first model to sign an exclusive contract with Revlon. She later went on to become a movie star, acting in American Gigolo in the early '70s.

But Hutton, who was born in Charleston, S.C., and grew up in Florida, became a model not for the glamour of it but because it allowed her travel. She first visited Africa in her early 20s and the continent still fascinates her.

Pacing the private office where we met, obviously restless, her face came alive when she talked of her travels.

"I was comfortable in Africa because it was wild lands and wild people. For 36 days I lived with these guys," she said, pointing to a photograph of herself squatting with a group of tribesmen in the Kalahari desert. "They are a hunter-gatherer tribe," she says. "These are serious aristocrats, they have the best kind of manners.

"I haven't done much adventuring lately, because of four years of business," she said, admitting she started her business partly out of desperation. She lost all of her money five years ago to a man who lied to her, squandered her money and then died. She estimates her losses at about $15 million (U.S.).

When he died, she was left with nothing but bitterness. She cried and screamed and wished for revenge. Then, she got over it and invented a brand of makeup aimed at older women, who had been ignored by the cosmetics biz, she explained.

"Regular makeup is made for young girls, and it makes you look like a monster if you have wrinkles," she said, admitting she had experimented with cosmetic formulations when she went back to modelling at the age of 47.

"I went into my kitchen and I pounded it out and added talc and I made it work for skin with wrinkles," explained Hutton, looking slim and stylish in a tweed pantsuit by Stephano Pilati for YSL.

She connected with a makeup artist she had known since the '90s, Roberto Morelli, and together they created a line of products for sale exclusively through infomercials and her website. It's also in Sephora stores in New York and San Francisco.

The most versatile Good Stuff product is a CD-sized makeup palette containing the most basic elements necessary for creating a natural, perfect complexion. It comes with a set of seven colour-coded brushes so the user knows which brush to use with each liner, concealer and shadow in the palette.

An accompanying instruction booklet and video provide detailed instructions about how and where to apply the makeup. Hutton designed the colour coding system, the packaging and wrote the instructions herself.

Whipping a brush set out of her tote bag, she dabbed a bit of sheer concealer on the Constant Shopper's inner eye.

"You see that little shadow there?" she said, showing me a mirror. "This will make it go away. It really brings light to the face."

The instruction booklet is dead simple, with colour-coded diagrams that match the colour coding used in the brushes and palette.

"You could be a toadstool and you'd be able to put this makeup on," said Hutton. "You could be a dummy, because sometimes, I'm that dumb. Every time I went to Africa for six months, I forgot how to apply makeup."