Carmen, Daphne we love you

I’m a cynic.

I saw both Daphne Selfe and Carmen Dell’Orefice as a tokenistic diversity-loving PR dream. Touted the world’s oldest supermodels, they certainly bring the ‘est’ factor* and perfect balance of political correctness and novelty that media can’t resist.

Strong feelings to come back from, I know. But I did have a turnaround moment after reading this little nugget of gold:

“Today I am in a territory that business considers unmarketable: age and white hair. Slowly, however, I started to own that territory little by little because I stood up for age.”

Both women have been modelling since their youth. But their careers really took off around the age of 70, when bold brands (this is around the year 2000) took a chance on age, seeing Daphne and Carmen take the catwalk and grace magazine covers with more success than they’d ever seen in their early careers.

These two trailblazers have had continued success over the last 15 odd years, propelled not by “brave” brands, but smart brands. Brands who have seen an opportunity to expand their appeal to the worlds most influential audiences.

We’re ready to see more Daphnes and Carmens – models who are not only beautiful clothes-horses, but opinionated spokespeople who give depth to brand campaigns.



*PR 101 – something’s more likely to cut through in media if it has the “est” factor - the bigg-est, new-est, fir-st, long-est