This month, Vogue did something it had never done before, something most people thought it would probably never do – it put two 76-year-old women on its cover.
Sure, they weren’t just any 76-year-olds. They were Meryl Streep and Vogue overseer Anna Wintour, and they were there in a meta way to discuss the mythology around The Devil Wears Prada 2, in which Streep plays a version of Wintour.
But still, 76.
“Actually groundbreaking,” went one comment on the magazine’s Instagram post.
The irony is that in breaching the age barrier, Vogue made itself seem not old but of the moment.
These days, as Wintour wrote in the magazine, “I feel age is actually an advantage.”
Or so it is beginning to seem in fashion. The most recent round of fashion shows, which ended last month, were notable not only for the almost total lack of size diversity on the runway, but also for the fact that they were, at the same time, taking one giant step forward when it came to another aspect of inclusivity: age.
The Chanel show opened with 50-year-old Stephanie Cavalli, who was one of 15 models over 40 on its runway.
Bottega Veneta had nine older models. Tom Ford, nine (women and men). Givenchy, eight. Balenciaga, five. Louis Vuitton, four.
And this isn’t counting the famous older models, like 52-year-old Kate Moss, who appeared on the Gucci runway; 57-year-old Gillian Anderson, who closed Miu Miu; and the seven art-world insiders, including 79-year-old Ming Smith and 52-year-old Amy Sherald, who walked at Carolina Herrera.
Put another way, according to data from the fashion search engine Tagwalk, 5% of the top 20 brands included at least one curve, or plus-size, model in their runway shows, but 100% included an older model.
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In fashion-speak, “older” is defined as merely over 30.
But, as Alexandra Van Houtte, the founder and CEO of Tagwalk, put it: “What we’re really seeing is that brands are increasingly embracing models with visible signs of age, such as grey hair or wrinkles.”
What she listed are signifiers that tend to appear closer to the 50-year mark.
And not just on the runway. At Celine, the designer Michael Rider invited Joan Juliet Buck, 77, the French Vogue editor turned Substacker, actor and radio host, to sit front and centre for the show, along with the 50-somethings Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson and Tracee Ellis Ross.
At Loewe, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s star guest list included Sissy Spacek, 76, making her first appearance at Paris Fashion Week.
“Age has become something brands seem genuinely proud to highlight,” Van Houtte said.
It’s a striking shift in an industry that has long been famous for fetishising youth. And it stands out in a world where viewers are inundated with images in which every sign of age – every wrinkle, hollow, age spot – has been filled in, tightened, filtered, lifted or otherwise erased.
Speculating on the work someone has had done, even someone in her early 30s, has become a parlour game everyone can play, and artificial intelligence has made constant modification and reinvention a part of our visual diet.
There’s a backlash brewing to the airbrushed age.
Courting the silver dollar
“There’s a practical reality agencies and the industry have to face: that older women have the purchasing power to buy the stuff being presented, and they have a desire to see themselves and their lived experiences in these spaces,” said Romae Gordon, a 52-year-old former model who returned to the runway a year ago.
Gordon began modelling as a teenager in Jamaica in the early 1990s. She found some success, but her career never really took off, and she stopped after only a few years to finish college and then manage a modelling agency.
A year ago, after her partner died, a friend persuaded her to step in front of the camera again.
In September, she was booked for Dario Vitale’s first (and only) Versace show, and in January she walked the Chanel couture runway, followed by the Chanel ready-to-wear show.
Now, she said, she is having her best season ever. And she isn’t alone.
“We recently scouted a woman who was over 60 in the supermarket in the countryside outside Paris because we’re seeing more of an uprise” in demand for older models, said Talisa Carling, the director of IMG Models.
The currently popular term (or euphemism) for such mature models is, she said, “generational”.
Pointedly, when Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Balenciaga, was trying to cast a broad spectrum of people for his most recent show in Paris, he said it was easier to find older models than plus-size ones.
“Two years ago, it was common to see the girls with different shape of the bodies,” he said. “Now it’s over. This year, I had to fly them in.”
Even though economists have been talking for decades about the power of what is referred to as the silver dollar or the grey market, fashion has generally given the idea short shrift in its public-facing initiatives – until now.
“The reality is that half of the spending power is in the 50-plus cohort, and half of the growth in spending power is in the 50-plus cohort,” said Gemma D’Auria, the global co-leader of the fashion, luxury and specialty retail practice at the McKinsey consulting firm.
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At a time when the growth of luxury has slowed or stalled, ignoring a major consumer group is simply not good strategy.
Indeed, according to the Federal Reserve, more than 70% of all the wealth in the US is concentrated in the over-55 age group, which is also responsible for more than 45% of consumer spending.
This is reflected in part in what Ashley Mears, a model turned professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making Of A Fashion Model, called “the new visibility of older women in public”.
See, for example, Martha Stewart on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 81 or Demi Moore at 61 on the awards circuit for her role in The Substance.
“It’s a paradox because they don’t look their age,” Mears said.
“For women who are successful in their fields and need to be visible, which usually happens later in life, the message is: You need to do work to look good.”
And that’s expensive, connecting youth with class and wealth, and creating further barriers to entry at a time when fashion needs to take them down.
That may be why Matthieu Blazy, the artistic director of Chanel, said he felt it was important that when it came to the models in his Chanel show: “We didn’t change their looks or try to make them younger.”
He wanted his message to be more “come as you are”.
Gordon, who has not had any cosmetic work other than facials, said this approach was common across her shows.
“They don’t want to put any makeup on me,” she said. “I’m grateful they think my skin is in good condition, but a little eyelash won’t kill anybody.”
Piccioli added: “We all want to show powerful women, even in their vulnerability. And pride in showing your age is a symbol of strength and power.”
To cover that up or disguise it is to subvert the very idea fashion is now supposedly selling. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
