Ageless Beauty

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Newsletter

The Morning

Ageless Beauty

We examine a surprising trend on the runways of Paris.

Share full article

Credit...

Tom Ford

By

Vanessa Friedman

I’m The Times’s fashion director and chief fashion critic.

April 19, 2026,

7:33 a.m. ET

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

I first started noticing the gray hair and laugh lines when I was sitting beside the Tom Ford catwalk in Paris last month, watching his collection parade by. You don’t normally see such signs of age at Fashion Week — or, to be honest, pretty much anywhere else these days, at least not when we are talking about women held up as avatars of beauty — so these models really stood out.

And once I saw them there, I saw them everywhere: at Givenchy, Chanel, Bottega Veneta. They weren’t just the usual ex-supermodels, like Cindy Crawford, whose fame obviates their age. They were great-looking women who also didn’t look like they were trying to remain forever 25.

Image

It was such a contrast to the heavily manufactured and airbrushed imagery that has become the norm in the celebritysphere that it started me wondering what exactly was going on — and whether this represented merely a momentary trend or a more meaningful shift. (

You can read my full story here

.) Today, I’m going to explain what I found.

Representation matters

“Age has become something brands seem genuinely proud to highlight,” Alexandra Van Houtte, the founder of the fashion search engine Tagwalk, told me after I got back and emailed her to check whether her data supported what I thought I had seen.

That sent me down a rabbit hole on social media, and I realized that not just brands but also more and more women were signposting the … well, signs of their age: posting pictures of their makeup-less faces, not fuzzed out with filters but bared for all to see. Paulina Porizkova, one of the models who defined the 1980s and ’90s, is happily (and mercilessly) chronicling her own aging — and has amassed a giant following because of it. So are some former editors and actors. Modeling agencies have taken note and are actively scouting older models.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

subscribe

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Log in

.

Want all of The Times?

Subscribe

.

Related Content

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT