Who says I can’t model lingerie at 58?
NICOLA GRIFFIN was in her early 50s when she was spotted by a modelling scout. Now she is determined to change the face of fashion
WHEN 58-year-old model Nicola Griffin watches catwalk shows she is always disappointed not to see women of her own age on the runway.
“I watched all the shows at Fashion Week and I must have seen 500 young girls who are 6ft tall striding along the catwalks but there was only one show that featured women over 40,” she says.
“I thought: ‘Is that it? Is that the best that we can all do? Where are the women that are size 14 or 16, that are 55, 65 or 70?’
“After all I’m 58 and I can wear gorgeous clothes but I’m not represented.”
However Nicola is helping to change the face of fashion. She’s fresh off the catwalk modelling lingerie for JD Williams at their Midster Live event, which only featured women aged 45 and over.
“Fashion should be for everyone,” she adds.
Nicola soared to fame two years ago when she became the oldest woman ever to be featured in American magazine Sports Illustrated, wearing a shiny gold bikini.
“We were on the beach and the stylist started giving out these gold bikinis. I was with four young girls and I assumed the bikinis were for them.
“Then they gave me one and I thought it must have been a mistake but the stylist said: ‘No, we want you to wear one too.’
“I was nervous but I put it on and it must have looked OK because the photo went into the magazine.”
Nicola has since posed for the cover of Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar and modelled lingerie for big brands including Panache, Figleaves and JD Williams.
NICOLA hopes her modelling career will give other women her age the courage to embrace their bodies. “It’s exciting that a normal woman my age could become a model,” she says. “It’s great to show other women in their 50s we aren’t ignored and isolated.”
And now she’s proud to show off her figure as a swimwear and lingerie model. “People think that when you get to a certain age you can’t possibly expose your stomach because it’s just shameful.
“But actually you don’t have to be 18 with a rock-hard stomach to wear a bikini. You can have a rounded tummy, you can have stretch marks, it’s OK not to be perfect,” she says.
The shoot goes to show how things have changed for women in their 50s and beyond in recent years. Nicola recalls how different things were for her mum when she was her age.
“Many years ago when you were a woman in your 50s you’d wear beige clothes, get a perm, sit in a corner and be an old woman.
“When my mum was 55 she didn’t have any nice clothes because they didn’t sell them for women of that age then, so she had to make her own.
“And there wasn’t make-up for women of that age either because older women didn’t wear make-up, that was for the young ones.
“Nowadays women can do whatever they want, whether they’re 50 or 80.”
Throughout her career Nicola has embraced her natural grey hair, which flows down her back in steely waves. “Years ago, when you hit 40 you had to cut your hair off. So when I turned 40 I cut it off to shoulder length,” she says.
“But because I’ve got thick hair it came out looking like a triangle. My children said I looked like Wendolene from Wallace and Gromit,” she laughs.
But she refuses to bow to social pressure. “I realised the only reason I’d done it was because people say you can’t have long hair after 40. But you know what? I don’t care. I love my long hair.”
And she’s also embraced her natural grey after years of dyeing it black. “I’d always dyed my hair but one day I came back from the hairdresser and thought: ‘This looks terrible. I’m never going back.’
“That was about 18 years ago and it wasn’t trendy to go grey at that time so people thought it was shocking. If you’re a woman of a certain age and you don’t dye your hair people think it’s a disgrace or that you’re letting yourself go. But I think that’s utter nonsense.” And it’s partly thanks to her striking hair that Nicola was discovered as a model aged 53.
“I was in a queue at the bank and this lady tapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘You’ve got such lovely hair. Would you consider doing this photoshoot for our shampoo?’ She gave me her number and I never called it. But a couple of weeks later my twins were leaving for university and I was devastated.
“One of them said: ‘Mum, why don’t you ring that number?’ And I did, because I thought it might cheer me up.”
She went to the photoshoot but had no idea it would change her life for ever.
At the time she was a single mum who was running a business from home while raising her twin daughters Elle and Tabitha, 23.
“I only went on the photoshoot for a jolly. We were promised lunch so I took a girlfriend with me and thought we’d have a day out.
“There were lots of women with grey hair there and it was really nice to be with my own tribe, my own people.”
LITTLE did she know that she was a natural as a model. “I took to it like a duck to water. And then they asked me to come back and be the poster girl. I thought it was fabulous,” she says.
The photoshoot for White Hot Hair was a huge success and shortly after the campaign was launched, a modelling agency asked to represent her. Overnight her life was transformed.
“Raising kids and working full-time is no joke because you don’t get any breaks. You never get a lie-in because you’re either on duty for work or you’ve got the kids,” she says.
“This is so much fun and it came at the exact right time because I was devastated to have an empty nest when my girls left for university.”
Nicola’s daughters were delighted too. “Recently the modelling agency had a summer party and my daughters came with me. They were so excited to spot models they recognised from Instagram,” she says.
A year after she started modelling Nicola closed her business, which helped French schoolchildren learn English, and started modelling full-time.
She’s since travelled the world with her job and gained thousands of followers on social media.
And she hopes to continue modelling for years to come.
“Just because you’re a certain age it doesn’t mean that you’re finished or on the scrapheap,” she says.
Instead, she hopes women will start to love their bodies, no matter how old they are or what they look like.
“I’m so happy and content with myself, I don’t care what people think of my body or the way I look.
“Once you start to like whatever you’ve got or whoever you are, it’s very empowering.”