How you can super still become a model after 50
AS AN undercover assignment, becoming a ‘ Mrs Robinson’ model didn’t seem too much of a stretch for me — just as long as I could keep my clothes on. I’m 58. Friends tell me I’m not in bad nick, and if the founders of Britain’s best known model agency for mature women are to be believed, there is huge demand for models of my age.
So, as I made my way to my first audition, I was feeling confident, verging on smug, about my chances, with visions of carving out a new career as a senior supermodel and giving Yasmin Le Bon (51 and busier than ever) a run for her money.
At 5ft 4½in, I know I’m not tall, but having passed the first hurdle to gaining a place on the books of Mrs Robinson Management — via a fuzzy selfie I emailed earlier in the week — I reckon I’m pretty representative of a generation of women who want to look as good as they can for as long as they can.
According to Fleur Brady and Rebi Merilion, who set up the agency two years ago, business is booming now that fashion and advertising have finally woken up to the power of the previously invisible 50-plus woman.
With the over-50s holding an estimated 77 per cent of all UK wealth, it’s all change as the new faces of famous brands become . . . well, old. Just look at internationally famous models like Daphne Selfe, 87, American model and actress Lauren Hutton, 72, and 84-year-old Carmen Dell’Orefice — who had her first Vogue cover aged just 15.
What’s more, for the first time, women are being selected for modelling in their later years, often being approached by agents after bringing up children or having a full-time career in a completely different field.
One of Britain’s most successful models, 68-year-old Sarah Wiley (you’ll have seen her in John Lewis ads), was recruited by a photographer who saw her pictured with her grandchildren online.
All this in an industry that not long ago would have regarded a model half my age (well, let’s just say 25) as ‘ mature’ and would have retired her off by 35.
But today the lifespan of a model can go on well into her 50s — and far beyond.
Just last month, the JD Williams brand, specifically targeted at the over- 50s and fronted by 56- year-old TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, posted doubledigit year-on-year growth.
But it’s not just a numbers game, nor simply a question of the booming ‘silver economy’. Fifty years ago, a woman was expected to ‘dress her age’ and clothes were made with that in mind. Nowadays, we are far less rigid and much more adventurous. We want the fashion industry to reflect our own image back to us, but we also share the same taste in clothes as our daughters and even out granddaughters.
At 58, and still a hugely successful model, Ines de la Fressange recently unveiled a collaboration with ultra-cool brand Uniqlo.
HeRe are classic trench coats, wellcut chinos and floaty dresses, jacquard sweaters, linen jackets and khaki sweatshirts — perfect both for the chic sixtysomething picking up her grandchild at the school gates and for the lithe twentysomething on a dressed-up date.
The 50-plus fashionista has truly entered the mainstream, and if these are the clothes aimed at us, we want to see women like us wearing them.
Back to my Mrs Robinson modelling debut — and I soon discover a problem that threatens to dash my new career plans. It turns out I hadn’t reckoned on the competition I was facing.
As Fleur told me just minutes after she set eyes on me, a potential mature model has to possess ‘ the full package’ — which means not only a handsome face but the right height and body shape, too.
There are two categories of model here, neither of them flatteringly labelled: ‘a classic’ is the industry term for those over 25, and a ‘retro’ denotes a silverhaired lady of a certain age.
But here’s the catch: both involve meeting an almost identical set of vital statistics to those of much younger models.
‘Obviously, if it is for fashion, you have to be the right size,’ says Fleur. ‘It’s slightly more flexible for older models because, after 50, a woman’s body shape does change so anything between an eight and a 12 works for us.
‘We do have one or two girls over a size 12, but once you hit a size 14 you are classed as “curvy”, or what they call plus size.’
She pauses, and then adds: ‘And, I’m afraid, even more important for fashion, a model has to be between 5ft 8in and 5ft 11in — which rather rules you out.’
So much for ‘realistic’ images — and so much for a newlyaccessible industry.
Crestfallen, I protest to Fleur that these are unrealistic guidelines for older models in a country
where the average woman is approximately 5ft 3in tall, weighs around 11st and is a size 16.
Surely, I plead, at the lofty height of 5ft 4½ and a size 10, I must qualify for some sort of specialist over-50 modelling work.
‘You do have a lot of hair and you don’t look as if you have had any work done — the beauty companies often have a “no Botox, no surgery” clause for anti-ageing ranges,’ Fleur says.
‘But you would be eligible only for model shots on hair dye boxes or other packaging, because the hair and beauty companies tend to use celebrities to front their mature market products.’
Rebi adds, sympathetically: ‘With the retro ladies, there is a little leeway. We have taken on a lady of 5ft 7½ in — but she had a real look.’
I get some idea of what she means when I study the walls of their chic London office, covered by photos of the models they represent. Here is Maye Musk, who at 67 still appears as a cover girl on high fashion magazines. And Sylvia Gobbel, once a muse to Helmut Newton in the Eighties and at 54 still doing shoots i n daring designer lingerie.
These models are so stunning that they make the likes of more familiar older faces — Helen Mirren in her glossy L’Oreal ads, for example, or Lorraine Kelly for Avon — look positively plain. And yet Mirren and Kelly are much more attractive to real women like me. I can relate to Mirren’s statement that she promotes the Age Perfect brand because ‘I am not gorgeous and I never was, but I was always OK-looking and I am keen to stay that way’.
So I am certainly not keen on having to match up to Mrs Robinson models like fabulous 60-yearold Yasmina Rossi, who starred in a Gucci ad campaign.
‘Yasmina has an incredible body, better than most 20-year- olds. She is a great advertisement for yoga and super- duper healthy eating,’ comments Fleur.
But Yasmina, surely, is not a realistic role model for 50-somethings? One look at her model card (with her very vital statistics, 34-27-36, printed across the top) convinces me of it.
Perhaps my vocal reservations about the pressure on women to stay young and beautiful for three- score-years-and-ten hits the right note with Fleur and Rebi, because, despite their misgivings about my height, my ‘look’ and my lack of modelling experience, they agree to try me out at a dummy photo session.
On the day of the shoot, I’m blase. How difficult can it be? It isn’t as if modelling is what you might call a proper job!
Ian, the make-up artist, applies layer after layer of mineral-based foundation before getting to work on my eyes. When he has finished, I no longer recognise myself in the mirror — but in a good way.
I am then moved on to the stylist, who has assembled a range of clothes suitable for a woman of uncertain years. They’re mostly navy and cream, and offer lots of coverage.
This, it seems, is the other rule of older modelling: you are not allowed to show much flesh, nor be too overtly sexy, unless you have a body like Yasmina’s.
THE photographer guides me to a spot marked by masking tape and tells me to ‘stand tall ’. This should be easy, as my shoes add six inches to my height, but it’s difficult to balance on them and within a couple of minutes I’m listing badly to my right.
It is no easier, I discover, when I am allowed to sit down: I try draping myself across a chair, but I look clumsy and ill at ease. By the end of my session, I have had enough of the whole business.
Being told to ‘smile without teeth’ / ‘let your right hand hang loose’ / ‘hold your body up from the core’ f or three hours is exhausting. My preconceptions are all wrong: it is hard work.
And even though some of the pictures on the computer screen are quite nice, I am not a ‘natural’ and no one — least of all Fleur or Rebi — is going to suggest I give up the day job anytime soon.
And yet a few days later, unexpectedly, Rebi calls me about a forthcoming casting, and I find myself in the Cafe Royal jostling with a dozen real older models. We are gathered to try out for a top-secret event later this month organised by JD Williams — the ‘first ever’ 50-plus catwalk show at London Fashion Week.
The brand makes big claims, not least in its championing of the ‘forgotten 50s’; and this show, we’re told, ‘will feature curvy, grey-haired models . . . all over 50’.
But perhaps not that curvy. None of the women at the Cafe Royal look smaller than 5ft 9in or bigger than size 10.
As we wait our turn, I become even more convinced that this is definitely not for me. Again, they are all lovely, but by no means representative of UK womanhood.
By the time the first of the 14 models has sashayed down the catwalk, I’m feeling so out-classed that I lose my nerve entirely, make my excuses and leave.
It’s obviously hugely positive that older women can sustain longer careers in modelling, and that the over-50s are increasingly visible in the fashion industry as a result. But don’t be fooled: it is still a business heavily reliant on smoke, mirrors and self-denying rocket salad. And it’s not, unhappily, for the likes of me.