Abstract
The desirability of youth is a core value long held dear by fashion and lifestyle advertising. Yet numerous recent campaigns by the likes of Lanvin and The Row have been fronted by older women. This chapter examines the implications of this shift for understanding the cultural value that older women can, or cannot, signify at this time in these spheres. Focussing particularly on the 2015 Céline campaign featuring Joan Didion, and the 2017 Pirelli calendar, this chapter argues that crucially the notion of cool is reinscribed across these labels by way of the “edgy” older woman subject, and examines to what extent this challenges (or merely relocates) established norms pertaining to what kinds of bodies warrant our desire and attention.
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Notes
- 1.
Broadly, this refers to an older demographic than those most popularly targeted by advertisers and marketing—‘older’ remaining a subjective and contested term here, which is, however, widely taken to indicate the 60+ market.
- 2.
Gitte Lee was also modelling in 2013 for & Other Stories’ launch catalogue and later the same year for an Italian Vogue editorial. Gitte Lee is on the cover of Cohen’s Advanced Style (2012).
- 3.
For an analysis of the Didion ad with a focus on the face, beauty and time, see Jerslev (2017).
- 4.
The cool factor attached to the Julian Wasser photos is furthermore alluded to in a 2015 Céline campaign, in which model Daria Werbowy, shot by photographer and filmmaker Tyrone Lebon, mimics the photo of the young Didion in her Corvette.
- 5.
Cohen on http://www.advanced.style/about. For a more comprehensive discussion of Cohen’s blog and documentary, as well as of Sue Bourne’s Fabulous Fashionistas (2013), see Jermyn (2014).
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Jermyn, D., Jerslev, A. (2017). The New Model Subject: “Coolness” and the Turn to Older Women Models in Lifestyle and Fashion Advertising. In: McGlynn, C., O'Neill, M., Schrage-Früh, M. (eds) Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63609-2_13
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