My mid-life modelling debut
. . . or how fashion critic SARAH MOWER made a triumphant stand for the older woman
Women who were in their modelling heyday in the nineties have been sweeping up and down the catwalk over the past month.
This triumphal march of the middleaged into fashion has been a bit of a spectacle to witness. Women in their 40s and 50s have been here, there and all over the place. It’s been like playing supermodel bingo: Stella Tennant here, Shalom Harlow and Carla Bruni there, eva Herzigova, Kristen mcmenamy, Isabella Rossellini and lots more familiar faces last seen a decade ago or more.
Then there was me. So utterly unfamous as to count as one of the newest old faces ever, I’ve ended up appearing in designer Antonio Berardi’s lookbook for spring 2019.
It wasn’t on a catwalk. I was just standing there, in front of the camera, feeling self-conscious. But representing, I hope, just a small part of a revolution in broadening attitudes that needs to happen.
That didn’t stop my reaction when I read the email from Antonio requesting my help: a large yelp of ‘nooo way!’
I am not, and have never wanted to be, a model. I’m a fashion journalist, chief critic for voguerunway.com. my job is writing about fashion as an observer, looking at models and working out how to describe ways in which their clothes are relevant or not. I began as the ‘ supes’ were being invented — oh, the glory days of Linda, Christy, Cindy and naomi!
Besides, I come from a generation, pre-selfie, which was brought up being actively discouraged from vanity. I had one of those mothers who, upon hearing me fret over wearing some ghastly Laura Ashley lookalike dress to a party, said: ‘Will you just stop fussing, dear? nobody’s going to look at you.’
There are barely any photos of me as a teenager. I hid from cameras. Possibly it was an act of revenge that I ended up with a career in fashion. But always from the position of fly on the wall. I’ve often felt I’d rather go about my work wearing an exquisitely tailored cloak of invisibility. SOMETHING else kicked in when Berardi asked me to join his shoot. Antonio said he was getting together a bunch of professional women he admires, who’ve been around the business since he was a young designer.
I’ve known him since he was the young British-Sicilian on the block in London in the nineties; the same sort of Central Saint martin’s graduate generation as Alexander mcQueen.
He can really cut — red carpet dresses as well as tailoring — and he’s one of those male designers who loves women. many designers pay lip service to that sentiment, but he really gets it.
This time, though, Berardi was going to quit the catwalk and standard models, and show how his repertoire is designed to fit all kinds of characters and ages. It was going to be a kind of women-together community project. ok then. I canvassed the opinion of colleagues. one has to be very careful not to cross lines in journalism. go on, they said. I wasn’t going to be paid and I wasn’t going to review Berardi’s collection. So there I was, off to the apartment in milan where Berardi now works. In a bit of a state.
To be honest, part of me was relying on a get-out-of-jail card. Ha! Surely nothing was going to fit when I turned up. I’m a good size 12. I don’t do short. I never wear dresses. I can’t wear anything see-through. I imagined ending up having a nice cappuccino and watching everyone else have a lovely time.
‘Choose anything you want!,’ Antonio said, gesturing around a roomful of clothes. There was only one choice for me — a blue brocade jacket and wide-legged black trousers of the sort which has become my personal uniform. only this jacket was a super- snazzy evening version with undertones of Prince. I’d love to wear that, and I know a lot of trouser-and-jacket type women who would, too.
even better — or worse, I didn’t know which — Berardi had sizes to fit. The ministrations of a talented, low-intervention hair and make-up team were performed — another terror was overcome. Then I was on, in front of a camera wielded — praise be — by a woman photographer. It was as quick and as irrevocable as that.
next on was Anna Dello Russo, another friend of Berardi. I daresay in her late 40s. Anna is the opposite of me; an Italian streetstyle star who only wears evening dress — in the day. She looked her extreme, fabulous self in an orange ruffled up-to-here frock.
Alison Loehnis, the 47-year-old president of net- a- Porter, appears too — in a beaded wideleg jumpsuit. In fact there were several of my peers, all of us different in shape and style. We were mixed alongside some regular, young models too.
And isn’t this what fashion should be? With something for everyone, a cross-generational spectrum in which everyone can find herself?
As for me and my accidental day as a model — well , it was fun. Truth be told, I’ve never been at all afraid of getting older. I associate it with coming into your own, leaving behind the mass of insecurities most of us are in our teens and 20s.
When I heard the wild applause and saw the expressions of quiet satisfaction that accompanied the comeback of all those stars of the catwalk this season, I thought: maybe a new attitude really is coming. It’s about time.
How great if this season’s middle-age wave cements a healthy change. Personally, I don’t want to work in an industry that excludes people, on any count. now we’re in, we’re in.