Good morning. The situation in the Strait of Hormuz remains volatile. And the cease-fire in Lebanon appears to be holding. We have more news below. But first, our chief fashion critic explains a surprising trend she noticed on the runways of Paris.
Ageless beauty
I first started noticing the gray hair and laugh lines when I was sitting beside the Tom Ford catwalk in Paris last month, watching his collection parade by. You don’t normally see such signs of age at Fashion Week — or, to be honest, pretty much anywhere else these days, at least not when we are talking about women held up as avatars of beauty — so these models really stood out. And once I saw them there, I saw them everywhere: at Givenchy, Chanel, Bottega Veneta. They weren’t just the usual ex-supermodels, like Cindy Crawford, whose fame obviates their age. They were great-looking women who also didn’t look like they were trying to remain forever 25.
It was such a contrast to the heavily manufactured and airbrushed imagery that has become the norm in the celebritysphere that it started me wondering what exactly was going on — and whether this represented merely a momentary trend or a more meaningful shift. (You can read my full story here.) Today, I’m going to explain what I found. Representation matters“Age has become something brands seem genuinely proud to highlight,” Alexandra Van Houtte, the founder of the fashion search engine Tagwalk, told me after I got back and emailed her to check whether her data supported what I thought I had seen. That sent me down a rabbit hole on social media, and I realized that not just brands but also more and more women were signposting the … well, signs of their age: posting pictures of their makeup-less faces, not fuzzed out with filters but bared for all to see. Paulina Porizkova, one of the models who defined the 1980s and ’90s, is happily (and mercilessly) chronicling her own aging — and has amassed a giant following because of it. So are some former editors and actors. Modeling agencies have taken note and are actively scouting older models.
(Fun fact: The fashion industry does not call older models “older models”; it calls them “generational models.” Another fun, or maybe not so fun, fact: In the fashion world, “old” generally means anyone over 30 — though the models and women currently getting most of the attention are in their 50s and above.) Still, fashion has a mixed record when it comes to inclusivity, and while the industry seems to have finally, truly, embraced racial diversity when to comes to the runway and marketing, it has also almost fully abandoned recent efforts to engage with size diversity. Which way is the age case going to go? Fad or structural change?The more people I spoke with, whether fashion insiders or observers, the more multilayered the answer seemed. It is deeply intertwined with not just the obvious driver of economics (older people have the power of the bank account), but also politics, culture, gender expectations, and the way social media and A.I. are shaping our ideas of how we should look.
“There’s always two poles in any movement,” Joan Juliet Buck, the author of the Substack Every Day Until I Die and the former editor of French Vogue, told me. “There’s this pull toward being post-human, shinier, newer, cloned, etc., the sense that people have elevated the lacquered surface of the machine over the body.” And, she said, there’s a corresponding pull toward “I’m real.” Increasingly, a group of tastemakers are gravitating toward the real, in both the analog and digital worlds. That’s why the consensus among those I spoke with was that this shift is more significant, and perhaps more permanent, than the usual pendulum swing of age-is-in, age-is-out. This time, it might actually stick. Ask Vanessa: Each week, Vanessa answers a reader’s fashion-related question. You can see recent editions here, and submit your own question via email or X. (Questions are edited and condensed.)
The Middle East
Politics
Around the World
Other Big Stories
Representative Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress and dropped out of the California governor’s race after several women accused him of sexual assault. (He has denied the accusations.) What does his case tell us about Congress? That #MeToo is alive and well. It’s a good sign that most people believed the women and that Swalwell was held accountable, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks write for The Hill: “If you believe that #MeToo was a blip on the radar, a passing moment, we would submit that perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps the movement hasn’t gone away at all, but has instead quietly become the norm.” That our political culture still fails women. After the accusations emerged, many in politics said Swalwell’s conduct had been something of an open secret, writes Naomi Seligman for MS NOW: “What so many people knew did not keep Swalwell from climbing the party ranks. It did not deter his allies and donors from encouraging his run for California governor.”
The increase of tech usage in the classroom has left students unprepared for college, Molly Worthen writes. Lucid dreaming — in which the dreamer is aware they’re dreaming — makes for a more fulfilling waking life, Cody Delistraty writes. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on the lessons for liberals from Viktor Orban’s loss in Hungary and Maureen Dowd on Trump and the pope. Human made. Human played. 75% off. Subscribe to New York Times Games for 75% off your first year. Our best offer is only available for a limited time. Relax and recharge with our full portfolio of games, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more — all mindfully made by humans.
Believing: Laila Gohar, the artist and designer, thinks beauty can save us. Gwendoline Riley: Her sharply observed domestic novels have caught on among stylish, literary-minded American women. On Language: Have you noticed everything is “-coded” these days? Tripped Up: An airline agent’s good deed cost a 90-year-old man $1,300, after an airport cart left him at the wrong gate. Who should cover the cost? Chairman of the Nest: Paul Waldman was a bodybuilder who later turned to art, producing transgressive paintings and elaborate birdhouses. He died at 89.
N.F.L.: The New York Giants have agreed to trade the defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence to the Cincinnati Bengals for the No. 10 pick in the N.F.L. Draft after Lawrence publicly requested a trade. College football: A Virginia Tech game was delayed after a skydiver crashed into the scoreboard, became stuck and had to be rescued. Gymnastics: Oklahoma came from behind to overtake Louisiana State University and win the N.C.A.A women’s championship.
“Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke: Burke’s best-selling debut novel takes us behind the scenes at Yesteryear Ranch, home of a popular and polarizing Instagram account run by Natalie Heller Mills, a self-declared tradwife. Married to a politician’s son, creator of content about tending chickens, baking bread and raising screen-free children, Natalie is an advocate for dialing back advances for women. That is, until her carefully curated world begins to crumble. Suddenly, she wakes up in 1855, the very era she’s idealized — only to discover that it’s a lot colder and grimmer than she imagined. For more: Read our review of “Yesteryear,” and a profile of Burke, who spun TikTok popularity into a book deal.
|
