EDITOR’S LETTER

Editor-in-Chief Farrah Storr on how our perceptions of age need to change, and why getting older is actually one of the greatest things we’ll ever do

“THE PROBLEM IS, WE HAVE BECOME USED TO HIDING AWAY THE OLD ”

I was 14-years-old the first time I saw Claudia Schiffer. Her face peered down at me from a poster on my brother’s bedroom wall: a towering juggernaut of blonde hair, Bambi legs and youth.

Schiffer was 23 when that photograph was taken, and was, she now admits, painfully aware her career would be over by the time she hit 3O. Because that’s how things were back then: youth was the secret sauce of aspiration; ageing the ingredient that soured the broth.

Culturally, we have always had a peculiar relationship with ageing, despite ‘old’ being the destination we are all heading for. For many years, ‘old’ has been absent from our screens, our billboards and our conversations. Think about it: when was the last you asked an old person for their view on something? Now think about the number of times you’ve asked someone younger for theirs…

The problem is, we have become used to hiding away the old. We have let them slink into the corners of life. When we’re young, all old people look the same – hunched, grey, age-spotted like a fly agaric toadstool. As such, we lump them into one amorphous mass: the aged. And it is our greatest failing.

Over the past few years however, the world has slowly realised its mistake. And none more so than the world of fashion. Iris Apfel no longer stands alone as an example of how wonderful getting older can look and feel. Over the past few years. Joan Didion, Charlotte Rampling, Vanessa Redgrave and Ali MacGraw have all fronted major fashion campaigns well into their eighth and ninth decades, making us all lust after the clothes on their backs in the process, no matter what our age. On the catwalks, meanwhile, models whose faces and bodies wear the glorious patinas of age – Karen Elson, Eva Herzigova, Carolyn Murphy – are once again leading the charge; experience and a life well-lived bestowing each one with an extra dash of swagger.

Because here’s the thing: the conversation around getting older used to be so dull, so dreary, so inhospitable with its creaking talk of wrinkles and weight gain and ailments that wring all the pleasure out of life. No one ever talked about the good stuff: the juicy wisdom you gather, the easy attitude you develop, the way your imagination expands and, the best bit of all, being freed from the tyranny of vanity. Older isn’t only wiser, it’s more interesting, too – which in its own way makes it just as spectacular as youth. Don’t believe me? Then look at the image of Claudia Schiffer, all 49 years of age, peering back at you from this front cover: blonde hair, Bambi legged and brimming with age and experience.