STYLE
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AGE BEFORE BEAUTY Fashion has a new muse, aged to perfection. Lynn Yaeger celebrates the Class of 2014
Charlotte Rampling in photo split: A shot taken circa 1970 and now, at 68, as she takes on the NARS campaign.
HUTTON WAS THE FIRST MODEL TO SIGN AN EXCLUSIVE BEAUTY CONTRACT ; HER 1973 DEAL WITH REVLON NETTED HER SIX FIGURES A YEAR , AND CHANGED THE INDUSTRY.
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ABOVE: GETTY IMAGES. BELOW: CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES /PHOTO ILLUSTRATION STEPHANIE JONES
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et me ask you something—can you recite all the lyrics to the Monkees’ theme song (not just the first four words)? Do you know the difference between hi-f i and WiFi? Did your first TV get only seven channels? Even if you are willing to close your eyes, clench your perfect white teeth, and admit that yes, yes and yes, you can indeed shout out those deathless stanzas, there is, believe it or not, still time for you to become a model. This is not a joke. In the last little while, oppressively juvenile fashion icons—like Elle Fanning, barely in high school, and Miley Cyrus (OK, she may be 21, but she still looks and acts like the poster child of pre-pubescence)—have been replaced by a roster of muses who can tell you with clarity how much fun it was when you could smoke on airplanes. We are speaking here of the louchely elegant Marianne Faithfull, at 67 the new face of Saint Laurent, a half century after she was a teenager palling around with Mick Jagger, now gleefully defying the maxim that if you wore these 1960s-inflected Saint Laurent styles the first time around, you are too old to revisit them now. And here is Charlotte Rampling—remember, she had that baby she didn’t want and gave to Lynn Redgrave in 1966’s Georgy Girl? Infuriatingly still sexy at 68, she is currently serving as the fall face for NARS. And what of Jessica Lange, 65, doing a similar service over at Marc Jacobs Beauty? Not to mention the folks at the beleaguered American Apparel, who have enlisted 62-year-old model Jacky O’Shaughnessy; or 70-year-old Catherine Deneuve’s gig at Vuitton; or Lauren Hutton, the same age as Deneuve, still showing that fetching space between her teeth for Lucky Brand. So pronounced is this trend that you will soon be able to buy what is billed as the fi rst “mature woman doll”—a miniature silver-haired rendering of Carmen Dell’Orefice, now 83, a Vogue cover girl in 1947. (Cont’d on p. 46)