Older Models: China Machado

Having read a news story this weekend on the rise of appearance-related anxiety in elderly women, I was delighted to see 82-year-old China Machado modelling for Fashion Magazine. Increasing diversity in fashion by accepting beauty at any age, using older models instead of fixating on the young, could help overcome this self-esteem issue. Don't you think? As Alex Yellowlees, a consultant psychiatrist, confirmed in the Observer yesterday, 'Today everybody is acutely aware of how they look, and our appearance has become a currency we trade on. That means we value old people less because they don't fit the 'currency' of youth. This in turn leads to a lack of self-esteem in older people, because they don't feel valued by a culture that can't get past superficial image.'

Born in Shanghai in 1929, Machado started modelling in 1954, after meeting Hubert de Givenchy in a Parisian nightclub. Moving to New York in 1958, she was introduced to Richard Avedon by Diana Vreeland. 'I worked exclusively with Dick and Harper's Bazaar for the next three years. I stopped in 1962 because, frankly, I couldn't give a damn,' the octogenarian model recently told Harper's. Moving to the other side of the lens instead, Machado became fashion editor for the American magazine (from 1962-1972).

China Machado also appears in the Timothy Greenfield-Sanders documentary About Face: The Supermodels, Then and Now.

Bring on the older models, I say.



Thanks to Fashion Gone Rogue and Dal Choda for bringing this photo shoot to my attention.