More than a few taut eyebrows were raised when a clutch of the world's luxury fashion houses launched their spring lines this year by celebrating older women.
Revered octogenarian novelist Joan Didion became the cool poster girl for Celine; 71-year-old rocker Joni Mitchell, in leather cape and wide-brimmed hat, was the headliner in the Saint Laurent campaign; and three Spanish grandmothers wearing tiaras stole the limelight in ads for Dolce & Gabbana's matador-inspired collection.
Was it a recognition of vintage female greatness, a slick advertising coup, or simply exploitation, the critics pondered? But as our baby boomers go golden, it was only a matter of time before stylish, grown-up women began appearing in advertising that wasn't for retirement villages or incontinence pads.
Some may label it a fad, but it's nothing new in New Zealand fashion. Karen Walker featured glamorous grand-dames in her eyewear a couple of years back, and World sent a trio of 60-plus models down the catwalk at New Zealand Fashion Week more than a decade ago.
World co-founder Denise L'Estrange-Corbet applauds older women no longer hiding under aprons, head scarves and rubber-soled shoes, but feeling good about their bodies.
"It's ridiculous, but before the 1970s, women felt they had to act their age and didn't want to be seen as 'mutton dressed as lamb', which was a phrase my grandmother often used about other women," she says.
"Today, women at the top of their game - like Helen Clark [65] - show no signs of slowing down or dressing like a gran. [There are] many corporate women, nationally and internationally, who are powerful and want to be taken seriously, but don't want to wear a traditional suit. They want to dress with individuality and have a quirky side. They have great bodies, they work out, and still want to be seen as sexy - and why shouldn't they?"
Billie Jordan recognised that years ago, when she took a group of spunky over-65s and created the world's oldest hip-hop crew. A dynamic, go-get-'em 45-year-old, Jordan can't wait to be 70.
She's really looking forward, she says, to being free from the pressures of work, to focus on the things that "really matter". She has the benefit of insider knowledge on what lies ahead - a communications consultant in her day job, she spends her spare time teaching women of the senior generation how to breakdance.
"Seventy is the new 50," says Jordan.
"Women in their 60s and 70s are far more liberated than they've been in previous generations - they live more independently and are much more youthful in their outlook on life.
"All the women I know in this age group not only know who they are, but they're far more accepting of their body and are very self-assured in their own values - what's important to them and what's not. They've lived long enough to have a great set of skills to manage difficulties, but aren't too old to have their bodies hold them back on the goals they want to achieve. I'm lucky to have such wonderful role models to look up to."
We meet three women who are defying their numerical age.
At 70, Mary Greig-Clayton rocks a 1980s new wave hairdo - a little bit Ziggy Stardust, a little Flock of Seagulls. But, she insists, the long shock of white in front, close-shaved on the sides, and wispy tendrils at the back, constitute her very own style.
Maybe it's the muso in her. She's been a cellist since she was 11 - although her career was almost curtailed by a devastating cycling accident - and now she's striving to play her way into Auckland's original chamber orchestra.
Or maybe she's at the forefront of a new trend. Friends refer to Greig-Clayton as an "early adopter" - always looking to embrace new technology, and the hippest fashion.
"I love technology - it's enchanting. I had a dad who adored anything new. I like to be current and connected; it's tedious when people say Facebook is bad," she says.
Aware she had to stand out from the crowd during her 35-year career as a leading real estate agent in Wellington, Greig-Clayton was a "labels' girl"; from Versace to Trelise Cooper. Even in retirement, she's on-trend with winter greys, and a splash of hot pink lipstick.
Retirement hasn't meant leisurely strolls along Orewa Beach, where she now lives with her husband Barry. Greig-Clayton walks briskly uphill most days, and swims in the ocean; she runs a "ladies who lunch" group of 34 women who met in the sea. She organises a book club and holds yoga classes in her garage.
She's up at dawn every morning, and helps get her nearby grandchildren off to school. She's a Justice of the Peace, and sings with St Matthew's Voices church choir at St Matthew-in-the-City. She believes in the mantra "planning, structure and relationships every day".
But cello is her true love. First encouraged to play as an 11-year-old at Chilton St James private school for girls in Lower Hutt, she progressed to lessons with Greta Ostova, a principal cellist in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, practising three hours a day, seven days a week. But at 16, when her interests changed, Greig-Clayton gave up music; revisiting the cello only after her second child was born.
But it was fleeting return - in 1979, Greig-Clayton and two friends were cycling in the Wairarapa when they were hit by a young driver. One of her friends was killed and Greig-Clayton was on crutches for a year, her arm so badly damaged she could no longer hold a bow.
"But out of the worst things in life can come the best," she says. Her career in real estate flourished, buying the Harcourts franchise in Wellington's seaside Eastbourne, and making the company's Hall of Fame.
After a 30-year break, she picked up the elegant and rich-voiced stringed instrument a month before retiring: "It's been a joyful struggle." She plays in the Devonport Chamber Orchestra, where musicians range in age from 20 to 80, and she leads the cellos in the Leys Orchestra in Ponsonby.
"The people you meet are quite extraordinary. There's a woman who's 97, who plays Bach cello suites to muster up the energy to go shopping," Greig-Clayton says.
Her own dream is to play in the acclaimed St Matthew's Chamber Orchestra. "Future magnets are so good for you - dreams that are really too big, but keep you going every day." For now she is in charge of the orchestra's marketing, having doubled their audiences so far.
She plays every day, around two hours' practice, on a cherished cello, made in Upper Hutt by former boat-builder Malcolm Collins. "It keeps your brain very active," she says.
"It's a really fantastic time in my life. I've banned my friends from saying 'At my age....' It's totally forbidden. The most interesting people are those who have led lives where they have dared."
Clare Pike would like to think she's playing a role in the baby boomer revolution.
For much of her adult life, she was self-conscious about the way she looked. She was critical of her "pear shape", regularly dyed her greying hair but seldom wore makeup. As she's aged, she's accepted her "flaws" and, at 62, now makes part of her living modelling.
"Forty years ago, I would have blushed if someone suggested I could be a model," Pike says. "I'm sure agencies would've thrown my photos in the bin." Others obviously see her quite differently - elegant with arresting blue eyes, a charismatic smile and a chic silver and gold bob. Yet Pike is still bemused by her work for magazine fashion spreads and clothing catalogues.
"I've totally fallen into it, and no one is more surprised than me," she says. "It's just been the right place, the right time and the right look." Embracing her grey hair has given her a point of difference, she says. She first stopped dyeing her tresses at 50, but friends persuaded her she wasn't old enough to surrender to the greys. "I wish I'd held my ground then." Pike finally ditched the dyes seven years ago.
Dresses have given her self-assurance too. "In trousers, I'm invisible. But since starting to wear dresses, people stop me in the street to pay me compliments," says Pike, who's been told she resembles actress Helen Mirren.
She reckons she's answering a call for older models. "Let's face it, there are so many baby boomers out there, you can't ignore us," Pike says. "You can put a dress on a gorgeous, svelte 20-year-old, but a woman in her 60s won't relate to her. The baby boomers have made our own rules as we've gone along, and it's neat to be at the forefront of that."
Pike, who also works in a clerical role in Auckland's central city, began modelling last year, asked by a friend to appear in advertising for a luxury tour-bus company. She was a little more tentative when offered a photo shoot job, but since a makeup artist said she should send her photos to Sara Tetro's agency, 62 Models & Talent, she hasn't looked back. Pike has been to castings for television ads, featured in an editorial fashion spread for a women's magazine, and now has regular shoots for a big brand's clothing catalogue.
"As a newbie, I was really nervous but they told me just to bring along my smile," says Pike.
Her adult children applaud her new career: "My daughter is a lawyer in London, and she says she's so proud of me. I've always been proud of her, so that means so much to me." Pike, who keeps in shape with morning beach walks and kayaking in summer, says modelling has given her a new confidence and focus. "I'm really, really happy. I'm hoping I can keep doing it for a long time - I started modelling as an older woman with grey hair, and that's not going to change.
"Really, I feel like I'm 45 ... and sometimes I still act like I'm a teenager. The logical side of me knows I'm older and I have to plan, but the 'everyday me' feels so much younger. It feels like I have a future; that my career isn't finite."
Leila Gilchrist has had a brief break from hip-hop. She's been nursing a fractured bone in her groin - not from dancing, but falling while running to catch a bus. Now, a couple of months down the track, she's back on the dance floor - popping and locking, breaking out the moonwalk and electric boogaloo - fully focused on taking her moves back to their roots, hip-hop's cultural home in the Bronx.
She talks of learning to dance in her late 60s as the beginning of her life. It's taken her around the world, and given her the confidence to stand up and speak - and be "fierce".
"I certainly don't feel 71 ... maybe 50," says Gilchrist, whose cropped silver hair is shot with pink in her transformation into "Leila G".
"I'm having the time of my life; I'd never have dreamt I would have so much fun. The fact is, it doesn't mean a jot that we're 'old'. We can do this; we can dance." Gilchrist is a front-row performer in The Hip Operation Crew, Waiheke Island's now-legendary dance troupe with an average age of 80.
As a 4-year-old, she shunned dance lessons when she couldn't master the steps. Now, at rehearsals in the island's Morra Hall, the moves come more easily; though the body sometimes requires more coercing.
"We'll do a new move 20 or 30 times to get the muscle memory locked in. We've had to work hard, because we want to get it right," she says. "At first, I thought, 'A pack of old geriatrics spinning around on our heads?' Then I thought, 'Why not?'" The crew are working on a new routine - longer and trickier - they're calling "Optimus Gryme", after the Waiheke local and dubstep pioneer who produced the music. "Lizzie 2 Short gets heaved up in the air!" Gilchrist enthuses.
Growing up in Dunedin, Gilchrist got little encouragement to push herself. "My mother told me it was a waste of time going to university, when I'd just get married and have babies." She'd liked to have studied medicine.
Instead, she worked as a medical receptionist for over 40 years, while being a wife and mother of two. After the death of her husband, Roger, a former Herald photographer, she moved to Waiheke in 2009 to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren.
"It was the best thing in the world - I suddenly came alive on the island," she says. She was outside the library in Oneroa when a young woman leapt out of a car and thrust a flyer in her hand. The woman, Billie Jordan, was looking for people over 65 to be part of a Flash Mob dance; from there, the Hip Operation Crew was born. Gilchrist has now danced in Taiwan and Las Vegas (at the world hip-hop championships) and hopes to perform at low-decile schools in New York in November.
"I can't believe how much my life has turned around. I've made wonderful close friends; I've got fitter," she says. Before Hip Operation, she'd had open heart surgery and a knee replacement.
She also has a new-found swagger. "At first, I'd never say boo - I'd just go along and do my thing. Now I'm in the front row; I'm the best one at the grim faces. We have to look fierce," she says. "I'm also preaching sermons at my local Presbyterian church, and acting in commercials. I'm using talents I never knew I had." As you get older, she says, "You can be bitter or better. And I choose better."
- Canvas
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