Demand for more mature faces has lured former professionals and first-timers in front of the lens.

Spotted in a bank queue a decade ago, Nicola Griffin decided to quit her job organising school trips for foreign students to embark on a new career as a model in her fifties.

“I just thought I’m going to go for it because I believe that older women have a right to be in fashion,” says the now-64-year-old, who has modelled for brands including Marks and Spencer and Aspinal of London. “We don’t constantly want to see one age group because we are not all that one age group or that one size, so I totally believed it would work out. And it did.”

Griffin is one of a growing number of 50-plus models fronting ad campaigns and gracing magazine covers in recent years. The 59-year-old silver-haired model Kristen McMenamy appeared on the cover of British Vogue in early 2022, and last year the 89-year-old actress Maggie Smith was the face of Loewe’s SS24 pre-collection campaign. There has also been a rise in older models on the runway at fashion week, with brands including The Row, Tove and Balenciaga all casting models over 50. According to fashion search engine Tagwalk, the number of womenswear shows that featured an older model rose by 34 per cent during the September season compared with last year. 

“Women’s voices are bigger, they’re more demanding, and they’ve got more disposable income,” says casting director Anita Bitton, who has worked on campaigns and runway shows for brands including Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Dior. “Plus, we’ve got more platforms on which to show things and designers need to put out so much more content, from runways and campaigns to social and commercial lookbooks, that there’s just room for more representation across the board.”

As the industry has become more age-inclusive, many models are also choosing to get back into the profession. “I definitely like it so much more now,” says model and stylist Mouchette Bell, who is in her sixties. She first modelled in her 20s and was lured back in front of the camera by the industry’s shifting attitudes six years ago. “When I was young and modelling, you only had a certain lifespan. The wonderful thing about modelling as I’m older is that I’m not trying to look young, and I can have grey in my hair if I want to.”

Nicola Griffin, 64

Nicola Griffin was 53 when she was scouted by a shampoo brand for grey and white hair in her local bank in Nottingham and asked if she would consider modelling for their campaign. “The only reason I went was because there was going to be a free lunch and it was in this beautiful studio in the countryside,” she laughs. “But then I did the shoot, and it was wonderful. I had so much fun on set and I just thought, this is my cup of tea.”

Encouraged by her twin daughters Tabitha and Elle, Griffin signed with MiLK Management and decided to retire from her role at a tutoring business a year later to pursue modelling full-time. She has since appeared in Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar Russia, and made history in 2016 when, at 56, she became the oldest woman to appear as a swimsuit model in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue, wearing a gold bikini.

Yet she still finds that some people are surprised to hear what she does. “I was at this wedding and a woman asked me what I did and when I told her I was a model, her response was, ‘For what?’ Some people don’t get it, and I struggle to say, ‘What is wrong with a woman in her fifties or sixties wearing clothes in a magazine? Why do you have a hang-up with that?’ They think a model should be 20 years old, size 6 and 6ft tall, and that outside of that bracket you are an imposter.”

Ultimately she likes the variety of the work and that no two jobs are ever the same. “I just love the people I work with, and all my on-set husbands,” she jokes. “I mean, I’m having a good time and I’m at work, so how wonderful is that?”

Mouchette Bell, sixties

For the Irish-Nigerian stylist Mouchette Bell, who previously worked as a fashion editor for Mademoiselle in New York, and at British Vogue under Anna Wintour, it was a chance invitation to speak on a panel at Bath University six years ago that led to her unexpectedly returning to modelling three decades after leaving the profession. “A good friend of mine asked me to talk about my career, but I ended up walking in their graduate show and a booker from Models 1 happened to be there,” she says.

Since then she has appeared in shows for Emilia Wickstead and campaigns for brands including Clarins, Arket and Toast. “In a way, it’s been so helpful doing the modelling at this time in my life because I was starting to feel a bit insecure,” she says. “I was at a bit of a crossroads and [modelling] has helped to make me feel happier about myself.”

Mouchette’s modelling career started in the 1970s, and took her to New York and Paris, where she was photographed by Peter Lindbergh for Italian Vogue, then edited by Franca Sozzani. “That was the most amazing shoot,” she recalls. “He was just one of those people that broke down boundaries but in general, working in those days, people would tell you that you were too this or too that right to your face and I was very shy and not really confident about my look, so it got to me,” says Mouchette, who decided to transition into styling in the late 1980s. “Nowadays I just think, this is me, lines and all.”

As well as feeling more confident in her sixties, her return has dovetailed with the industry becoming more racially inclusive. “Back then, blonde was the most beautiful thing and the ideal of beauty was not somebody of mixed race or somebody who had a curvaceous figure,” she says, “and I think that has changed wonderfully.”

Working as a freelance fashion editor and stylist has also helped her deal with the sometimes fickle nature of the profession. “One month everybody loves you and the next you might not hear from anybody, but I’ve learnt not to take things personally,” she says. “I know what goes on behind the scenes and I worked so hard when I was young that I don’t feel like I have to be working every single day of my life.”

Kirsten Owen, 54

“It took me a while to make [modelling] something of my own, and then it became more fun,” says Canadian model Kirsten Owen, who started her career at the age of 17 after being persuaded to take modelling classes by her older sister and whose barefaced beauty made her a well-known muse to seminal 1990s designers such as Helmut Lang, Ann Demeulemeester and Jil Sander.

Now in her fifties, Owen, who recently walked in Ann Demeulemeester’s SS24 show and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair Italy last year, has been in the profession for more than 35 years, though she says the pace of work ebbs and flows. “Sometimes it’s more full-time but it’s just so random, and there’s no routine,” which she says can be difficult. However, she still gets excited about working with top photographers, and her years of experience have also brought a new dimension to the role. “It’s great to feel like I can collaborate on a shoot now and speak about my ideas because I know I have a feel for it.”

When she is not ricocheting between photoshoots and fashion weeks, she enjoys a more off-grid life tending to her organic blueberry farm in Vermont, which she credits with keeping her strong and grounded for modelling. “In summer I can be picking blueberries for 10 hours a day. It’s a lot of physical work but I find it really healing and I like the balance of being able to come back to that after flying around and doing modelling,” she says. “It’s like being on stage when you’re on set. It can be scary and you have to come out of your shell, so I really feel like I have to be physically and mentally strong to be able to put myself out there.”

Some of her favourite experiences include shooting on an iceberg in a remote village in Greenland that she had to reach by helicopter and working with super-stylist Suzanne Koller in Paris for her 2017 cover story for M Le Monde. “I just feel so grateful because I didn’t think that I would be modelling at this time and to be able to get on a plane and see the world, even for a few days, is just so incredible.”

Anna-Lena Akerstrand, 60

The Swedish model, who has walked for The Row, Roksanda and Eudon Choi at fashion weeks, and appeared in a 2022 Gucci ski campaign, had been working as a physiotherapist for 13 years when she was scouted by The Wonders’ Lina Persson while shopping in her hometown of Stockholm two years ago.

“I was really surprised when they told me that they wanted my look because I’d never even posed in front of the mirror,” she says. “I could never imagine that this crazy thing would happen and that I’d have the courage to say yes, let’s do this.”

When she was in her twenties, she received lots of offers to work as a model but would always say no because “I had this idea of what people in the business were like,” she says. “Also, back then, you were supposed to be feminine, but I wasn’t the girly type and I never did my make-up. Now my agency says you can just be yourself.”

She describes this new work chapter as “the hardest thing” she’s ever done and says it’s taken her a while to feel comfortable being in front of the camera. But she’s now enjoying the whirlwind lifestyle “more than I ever imagined. I got back home from London Fashion Week at one in the morning, then had to get up at 6am to work and was at home for 24 hours before having to repack and I thought, ‘I like this’. It’s so crazy. I’m 60 and I like this lifestyle.”

Modelling has also taught her how to be more flexible. “I’m learning to go with the flow for once in my life. It’s a big lesson for me because I’ve been so disciplined all my life, you know, be a good parent, do a good job.”

She says her 35-year-old daughter Sanne urged her to go for it. “She’s my biggest supporter and she said to me, ‘Mum, just do it. It’s your time to have fun.’”

Written by: Sara Semic

© Financial Times