Don’t forget the golden oldies, M&S

Nana Wereko-Brobby, 25, Editor

‘Wake up M&S, it’s the Millennium, a brave new world where no-one wants lycra or terrylene in their fibres and no-one wears cardigans with chestnut buttons!’

So spoke a riled up M&S customer in 1999 about the old fashioned and narrow-sighted approach to fashion that the brand was taking. The mood of the moment seemed to be that M&S catered to a customer who was frumpy, unfashionable and old. Another put off punter pinpointed the issue by saying, ‘the problem is that their target customers are entering their seventies and dying off’. With no younger generation to sustain the sales, M&S looked to be on the decline, criticised for a backward approach and ‘lack of a radical impetus for change’. (Bruce Hubbard, Citigroup, April 2004).

This is a very different story to the M&S we know today.

Practically drowning in silk flame maxi dresses, cropped denim and slash neck cardigans, M&S have worked hard to revamp their image and become a socially acceptable brand. And by ‘socially acceptable’ I mean a brand which the opinion formers in the fashion world, in their 20s, 30s, 40s and (pushing it) 50s, are happy to feature in their magazines and pay some attention to.

Advanced Style: Older Style Icons for London Fashion Week

Nana Wereko-Brobby, contributing editor, 24

Whilst cameras point to the juvenile stars of London Fashion Week, it’s nice to know that some people in the fashion world are focussing their lenses on some older beauties.

Lynn, 78. Photos taken by Ari Seth Cohen for Vogue Japan.

London Fashion Week is underway and the nation readies itself for a week where innovative designs, new body shapes and sharply defined features are all up for discussion. With this comes the expected, and mostly unoriginal, media backlash: models are too thin, too white, too young.

There is no question that this is an industry in which youth is a highly prized commodity. Kate Moss was discovered at the elfin age of 14 and was on the cover of The Face by 16. Gemma Ward was featured in Australian Fashion Week aged 15 and already a Vogue ‘It Girl‘ by 16.

But in the last decade, as model as celebrity (and vice versa) has continued to flourish, we have witnessed former models coming back into the spotlight in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s. Twiggy’s M&S adverts, Madonna’s 2010 D&G campaign and Jerry Hall’s continuing successful career (despite the pesky appearance of her 17 year old daughter on the scene) is testament to slowly changing attitudes about beauty and age.

That said, these are celebrities and their beauty is mostly being celebrated despite their age. The question is, where are the  role models whose beauty is being recognised and captured on camera in their advanced years? We’re not talking about sentimental and patronising shots of older people with their ‘heads held high’ on a billboard for some government campaign. We’re talking full on glamour, beauty and enviable poise from a set of older models who, to cringingly coin a Tyra phrase, look ‘fierce’.

Enter the edgy contender in this photographic field, fashion blogger Ari Seth Cohen. A New York based photographer and writer, Cohen’s blog Advanced Style documents the beauty of striking older men and women.