Vivienne Truran, an 82-year-old from Cardiff, has amassed 829,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts daily videos about her outfit choices and trademark glasses. Once a quiet civil servant and antiques dealer, Truran started her influencer career just 18 months ago, after realising at 80 that she is "quite an outgoing and loud person."
From Background to Spotlight
Truran spent most of her life in the background, she says, partly because her late husband, Martin, was a 6ft 4in rugby player who "took the room" when he walked in. "You can't have two noisy people in a relationship," she explains. They were married for over 40 years; Martin died in hospital during Covid after developing dementia and suffering strokes.
Feeling isolated and with no children or siblings, Truran befriended her neighbour, James Rolling, now her talent manager. Rolling persuaded her to get in front of the camera and introduced her to friends as his carer, which inspired her Instagram tag @vivthecarer. She describes herself as a "timeless fashionista," her third career after the civil service and antiques dealing.
Early Life and Career Shifts
Raised in Cardiff by her mother and grandmother, Truran's parents divorced when she was three. Her father paid her mother maintenance of "a pound a week," which shaped her self-reliance: "My mother brought me up never to rely on anybody but myself." At 16, she wanted to train as a hairdresser, but her mother insisted she join the civil service for the pension. She worked for the Post Office and British Telecom, taking redundancy at 48, then became an antiques dealer, running three stalls at her busiest.
Truran believes her mother, who loved dressing up even in a care home, would have enjoyed her Instagram posts. Her own fashion history includes styling a pair of her first husband's swimming trunks as hotpants in the 1960s and a beatnik phase.
Life as an Influencer
Influencing has given Truran a routine: "I get up every morning, have a shower, get dressed and make my video." She is often stopped in the street and called famous, which she finds surreal: "I'm nobody special. I'm just somebody who sits in a house, puts on clothes and chats a lot." She hopes to reach 1 million followers.
Truran enjoys challenging age stereotypes, like paying with her Apple watch at Pull & Bear. "I do enjoy saying, 'Look, I might be old, but I'm alive.'" Her followers form a community, and she invites them to "keep following me on this journey," uncertain but excited about where it leads.
