Martha Stewart is many things to many people. A pioneer in the lifestyle space, she was arguably the world’s first lifestyle influencer – long before the age of Instagram. She’s launched magazines, fronted television shows, designed homewares, and shaped a vision of “living well” that homemakers across America, and eventually the world, aspired to. But to those closest to her, she’s simply Martha.

“I think some of my older friends are probably a little pissed off at me for being able to go the lengths I go to during a day,” Martha shared as we spoke over a Zoom call; me in the wee hours of a chilly Sydney morning and her the Brown Room of her Bedford, Maine, residence – dappled sunlight coming through her windows.

Martha has accomplished so much in her illustrious career, including being the first female self-made billionaire in US history. These days, Martha is firmly in her comeback era.

At 81, she made history as the oldest woman to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition. She stole scenes on The Roast of Justin Bieber with her razor-sharp wit, bewitched audiences with Snoop Dogg, charmed millions with her cheeky selfies on her Instagram, and peeled back the curtain on her remarkable life in a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary, Martha.

Her “thirst trap” which went viral on Instagram. CRedit: Martha Stewart Instagram

However, her career started in modelling. In 1956, at age 15, Martha was the face (and body) for Lifebuoy Soap, an all-over deodorant bar, with the tagline: “The active soap for active people!”.

Nearly seven decades later, she’s the face of Rexona’s new Whole Body Deodorant.

“Lifebuoy was an all-over-the-body deodorant soap. So I thought, wow, this is so weird to now be working with a spray!” she laughed.

“The soap has evolved into a spray or a cream, and is still concentrating on the entire body for body odour. And I thought this was kind of funny – and also kind of unusual. If I did it at 15, I can do it now, at whatever my age is!”

To celebrate the launch, Rexona released a playful “how-to” video featuring the ever-game Martha, watch above, once again proving she’s as relevant, and refreshing, as ever.

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Why did you say yes to Rexona’s Whole Body Deodorant campaign?

Well, it’s a new product; it is being sold in Australia. It was a funny coincidence for me, because when I was 15 in 1956, I did a commercial for Lifebuoy soap, which is also a Unilever product, which is an all-over-the-body deodorant soap.

So I thought, wow, this is so weird to now be working with a spray. The soap has evolved into a spray or a cream, and is still concentrating on the entire body for body odour.

And I thought this is kind of I thought it was kind of funny, and I also thought it was kind of unusual.

So if I had done it at 15, I can do it now, at whatever my age is!

So it’s kind of like a full circle moment, almost.

I know that’s what was so amusing to me. And my agent didn’t know that! I mean, nobody knew it when Rexona came to us. So, when I thought about it, I’m the one who told everybody it was so funny.

So everyone has an impression of who “Martha Stewart” is, but how would your friends describe you?

Oh, you would have to ask them. They all probably have very different opinions of me.

Curious, tireless, energetic. How does she do it? How did she get it all done in a day? Busy, busy, busy.

And I think some of my older friends are probably a little pissed off at me for being able to go to the lengths I go to during a day. And many of them are slowing down a little bit. But the average age of my friends keeps dropping, because I want to stay as active and as youthful and as tireless as I can possibly stay.

So I want to have friends who hike with me and horseback ride with me. I have a sister, Kathy, who’s six years younger than I am. She is just amazing too. She just won a golf tournament – her fourth in a row. Yeah, she’s an amazing golfer. I invited her up last weekend from Greenwich, and she rode horseback with me perfectly. That is just the kind of family we have. We have a lot of energy.

Credit: Instagram

You’ve built a lifestyle empire. What does living well mean to you?

Living well means waking up in the morning with energy, with fortitude, with a curiosity, with wanting to get things done.

Being able to go to the gym if you feel like going to the gym. Or taking a hike, working in the garden, baking a cake, having a full, good life, taking care of family, interacting with your friends, those things that are so vitally important to ageing.

Still from ‘Martha’. Credit: Netflix

You’ve opened the Martha Stewart Centre for Living. Why was it important to start this centre?

Well, I founded that hospital at Mount Sinai, which is one of New York’s leading hospitals, about only like 15 years ago. It was for my mother.

My mother lived on the ripe old age of 94 with nary a complaint. No serious illnesses, giving birth to six children, being a school teacher and spending her entire life babysitting until she was 90 years old, for neighbours.

My mom was fabulous. I want everybody to be able to experience ageing in a successful way, as my mom did.

So this is a wonderful hospital. We deal with 1000s of outpatients at Mount Sinai every single year. It is a geriatric, medicine-based Hospital, where we give advice not only on diet and on exercise and on medical care, but also on many other subjects having to do with ageing.

Many of my friends use the hospital. Many of my friends’ parents use the hospital. And I’m very proud of it, and I’m very proud of the doctors who work there.

You’ve been setting trends for decades. But is there a home decorating or a cooking trend that you wish you hadn’t started?

Let’s see something that’s annoying… Well, I didn’t start it, but I allowed it to be started in our magazine. And that was the wrinkled napkin, the unironed napkins – do you know that trend?

You wash the napkin, and you just fold it up and put it on the table. I hate that. I like beautifully ironed linens and sheets and and I like nicely folded towels.

Give me a good movie, and I will sit and iron every single sheet in sight and every napkin.

Oh, and unpolished silver. A lot of lot of people are using tarnished silver in their pictures. On purpose. I hate it with a passion.

To serious business. Tell me everything about your pet donkeys.

I have five gorgeous Sicilian donkeys. They’re miniatures, and a Sicilian donkey has a cross across its back. Do you know that?

So there’s Rufus and Clive and Billy. Billy’s a girl, and Rufus and Clive are boys. And then I have Jude and Truman. They’re my grandchildren’s names. When I adopted Jude and Truman, I had asked my grandchildren to name them, and they kind of forgot to! So I named them Jude and Truman. They’re charming.

We keep the girls separate from the boys. At night, they each have their stalls, but during the day, I just made them a new paddock. That is sort of like Sicily, because, you know, they’re Sicilian, and they need rocks.

Martha’s donkeys! Credit: Instagram

They were in a beautiful grassy field, which I love because there’s a lot of grass, but I gave them a paddock underneath some towering white pine trees, and they have big rocks that they can jump up on. And I think they like it a lot.

Clive and Rufus are of indeterminate age; they’re probably over 30. They’re doing very well.

I know gardening is a big part of your life, one of your big passions from your childhood, but is there a favourite part of gardening?

Well, I love to propagate, grow things from seed, from cuttings, most of the trees. I was gonna ask you what that is. What is it? [Martha asking about my plants]

It’s a bunch of Monstera and some ivy plants just propagating. I live in an apartment, so trying to root them and grow some more.

Yeah, they look pretty. I root everything, and I divide everything I have.

I have massive agaves that have babies every single year. And I give the agaves, the larger ones, to friends for like housewarming presents and stuff. They put them in giant pots at their entrances. It’s so fun to go to friends’ houses and see my babies in their beautiful pots, you know, greeting, greeting guests at the entrances.

MArtha’s Cyads. Credit: Instagram

And then I also grow a lot of cycads. I grow trees from pretty much scratch, trees and boxwood from scratch. So I have, I have probably planted, oh, maybe 20,000 trees on my farm. All from rooted cuttings, and they’re towering. I mean, some of my pineoaks now are three stories high!

So you’ve pretty much done it all: TV, publishing, cooking, gardening. What do you think is the most unexpected chapter in your career?

Most unexpected is, I think, being like the most loving Grandma. I have two fantastic grandchildren, and I love them so much. They are fantastic children. And I can’t, I can’t wait to see them evolve and grow and turn into adults. It’s just incredible how lovely they are and how energetic they are, and what good students they are. That’s, to me, probably the greatest gift my daughter has given me.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 22: Martha Stewart attends Stranger Things: The First Shadow – Broadway Opening Night at Marquis Theatre on April 22, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Netflix)

My last question would be, if you could organise the ultimate dinner party, who would be on the guest list?

Oh, the guest list would have to be…Well, I was just on a ship with a whole bunch of celebrities, so “Been there, done that”! So it’s not about celebrity. Maybe some of my favourite authors. I would love to know Henry James and I would just love Edith Wharton, boy, I would love to know who Edith Wharton was as a person. And oh, Tolstoy, I would love to know what his brain was like. Oh yeah. So I would have, I’d have a table full of authors!

Rexona has partnered with Martha Stewart to launch its new Whole Body Deodorant, a category-first innovation. Because everybody smells everywhere.

The post The Queen of Influencing: Martha Stewart on living well – and staying fresh appeared first on The Australian Women's Weekly.