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NE LOOK at Linda Rodin, and it’s easy to see
why Mary-Kate and
Ashley Olsen cast her
as a model in their recent ad campaign for The Row. The 65-yearold skincare guru is wearing her
signature bright pink lipstick and
oversized eyeglasses. Her white
hair is tied into a simple low ponytail. She radiates “chic” in an allblack ensemble, but nothing about
her reads overly classic or stuffy —
she’s undeniably contemporary.
As she should be. Rodin started
her eponymous skincare line in
2008 after a long career in the
fashion industry, enjoying a brief
stint as a model in the ‘60s and a
successful tenure as a stylist for
the likes of Harper’s Bazaar, Gisele
Bundchen and Madonna. “It’s
funny to think that people want to
take my photograph — why didn’t
they want to take it when I had no
wrinkles?” she joked when we met
in New York recently.
But Rodin’s certainly grateful
for the opportunity to model, especially when it involves working
with the Olsens. “I knew they respected me and they knew I wasn’t
going to show up… young,” she
said. Response to the campaign has
been overwhelmingly positive, in-
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dicating that perhaps the industry
is ready to accept images of models
above the age of 20... at least if the
Olsens say so. Rodin explained: “I
think that was what was so interesting: If those two girls find this
amazing, when they’re on the cut-
I think the whole
culture’s screwed up. They
retouch 20-year-olds.”
ting edge of everything, there must
be something to it.”
It would appear there is. More
and more magazines and brands,
like Marks & Spencer and TK Maxx
in the UK, are enlisting mature
women to star in photoshoots.
Some models, like Sarah Wiley, are
even scouted after they turn 50.
There is a “whole gang of us roaming around,” Wiley, 66, told Stella
Magazine last month. That “gang”
includes 85-year-old Daphne Selfe,
81-year-old Jenni Rhodes and
82-year-old Carmen Dell’Orefice,
who’s been working steadily as a
model since the age of 15.
As for Rodin, she had a full-page
feature in American Vogue in August 2011, and she also posed for
upcoming issues of Dutch maga-