Why the industry is finally putting age before beauty

A funny old thing is afoot in fashion — and ‘old’ is the operative, if relative, word. Claudia Schiffer, 44, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, 43, are this season’s icons, heading up campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton, and making 40 not only visible, but the heady epitome of chic.

And it doesn’t stop at 50. Youngsters Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen hired iron-haired sixty-something Linda Rodin to front ads for their label The Row this season, while the notoriously homogeneity-obsessed American Apparel discovered a new underwear model in the form of one Jacky O’Shaughnessy: obviously and proudly in her early sixties and all carmine lips, streaming silver locks and lacy knickers.

Beauty companies — formerly age-resistant, if not positively phobic — are also getting in on the act. Marc Jacobs’ cosmetics are represented by 65-year-old actress Jessica Lange. Octogenarian Joan Collins boasts a new make-up range, for which she is the face, that the young (not least her 22-year-old goddaughter Cara Delevingne) are lining up to wear. Meanwhile, Nars has 68-year-old Charlotte Rampling as its poster girl, Dolce & Gabbana has Linda Evangelista, 49, and Christy Turlington at 45 fronts Maybelline.

Where youth has traditionally been the be-all and end-all of fashion, beauty is at last preceding age, with the elegance and certain je ne sais quoi that comes with discreet weathering. Accordingly, it is the 40-plus set rather than the skinny adolescents of yesteryear who are providing the go-to girls for advertising’s most prestigious contracts.

Like haute versions of M&S’s Leading Ladies, these are women whose wrinkles attest to lives well lived; women who can afford to invest. Yet they are not merely appealing to their peers: they are ‘selling down’ to women in their thirties, twenties, even teens. It is no coincidence that among younger fashion fanatics, shades of grey are the hip hair colours du jour.

Dawn CL Pedersen, creative director of fashion forecasting service Trendzoom, confirms: ‘There’s a definite sense of older women having more of a media presence than they did. It’s part of a gradual move towards “embracing your age” and the positive shift towards feminism. What women wear is becoming less defined by their age, clothing is “ageless appropriate”. The increase in high-profile campaigns headed by women and strong leading roles for actresses, such as Robin Wright, 48, in House of Cards and Gillian Anderson, 46, in The Fall, is compounding this trend. Celebrities in the 40-plus bracket have an ageless appeal, fuelled by confidence.’

One might take all this as a sign that ‘women of a certain age’ are finally being given the degree of cultural respect accorded to older men; or, at the very least, that their earning power is being respected. Not that they look like ‘older women’, of course — this is less the ‘grey pound’ than it is the ‘Aveda Visa’, wielded by women whose silver has been transformed into honeyed highlights, and who enforce zero tolerance for middle-aged spread.

Sixty-something baby boomers felt that they would never grow old and continued to define youth in their own blue-jeaned image. However, Gainsbourg and co belong to Generation X, which completely rejects age distinctions in a world in which chia and kale dietary regimes, Botox, Hormone Replacement Therapy, Pilates and triathlons mean that one can look better at 45 than one did at 20.

Moreover, now that diets and fillers have made it possible for everyone to look perma-young, mere youth alone is no longer that desirable. As Charlotte Rampling insists, true beauty is about adding, not eliminating character: ‘Your face is your expression — you make your worth,’ and deems sexiness ‘a juicy sparkle’, unrelated to years. Regarding the pressure to have surgery, she has remarked: ‘If you’re going to be a sheep and follow everybody, do it. Become another fabricated face. It’s heartbreaking.’

As to her own angular and insouciant pulchritude, Rampling has stated: ‘I know how I can be. I know what I can push on, what vibe I can give out. I know the power I have in different areas.’ There could be no stauncher expression of the potency the older bird brings to her allure.

Signs are encouraging that this is not merely a gimmick, but a sea change. Justine Picardie, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who is in her early fifties, remains confident: ‘It’s not just a passing trend; luxury brands have done detailed research, and realised that their key consumers are women over the age of 40 — in many cases over the age of 50 — who are affluent, financially independent, sophisticated, and who don’t want to be patronised with inappropriate advertising campaigns. They’re a tremendously powerful demographic that can no longer be routinely ignored by ad agencies. Many of them define themselves as being feminist, as well as being interested in fashion; the two are not mutually exclusive. And they are therefore far more likely to identify with advertising campaigns and editorial that features strong, grown-up women. It’s a hugely positive development.’