'At 53, I don't really care': The rise and rise of the middle-aged model

Kate Moss at the Prince's Trust gala in New York City on April 28, 2022. Photo / AP

Arabella Greenhill was 18 years old the first time she was sent to Japan. It was 1987 and she had abandoned her studies at an art school in London after her burgeoning modelling career began to take off. At 5'7 with red hair, she was told she was ideal for the Japanese market – but it was also Japan that broke her and made her leave the industry after just three years.

A typical day in Tokyo would involve two jobs: one from 8am to 4pm and another from 5pm to 9pm. After that, agency bosses would send her to nightclubs where models were given free food to lure in Japanese businessmen willing to spend a fortune on drinks. The only time Greenhill could afford to phone home was at night and she talks about standing in damp phone boxes in the dark while men banged on the door and tried to take photographs of her.

"By my third three-month visit, I was 20 and was so lonely and alienated that I stopped eating," she says. "Looking back, it must have been a control thing and by the time I came home, I weighed about six and a half stone and my hair was falling out. My modelling agency took one look at me and said, 'Oh you've lost weight, you look great'– but it wasn't great, my periods had stopped. That was when I quit."

Now 53, Greenhill has decided to reprise her career as a model after a three-decade hiatus. Like Kate Moss, 48, who revealed on this weekend's Desert Island Discs that she was forced to take her top off in photoshoots when she was just 15 years old, Greenhill looks back on the prevailing culture of the 1980s and '90s with a critical eye.

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Equally, she is gratified by the extent to which the industry has changed: agencies, bookers and editors are generally kinder, waif-like skinniness and extreme youth are no longer revered and social media has given models a voice they never had before.

Crucially, though, Greenhill has also changed. Her perspective has been shaped by her successful career as a fashion editor at magazines such as Vogue, Marie Claire and InStyle, and today she sees modelling as a confidence-boosting part-time career that she fits in alongside her work as a stylist and her ceramics studies.

"When you're 18, you're still growing and so vulnerable. You just want everyone to like you. Being a model at that age defined me so if a potential client rejected me, I would feel terrible about myself," she says. "But at 53, I don't really care – I don't mean that in a bad way, simply that my life is so much bigger now."

Until very recently, of course, the idea of a fifty-something fashion model was anathema. But as the cohort of Eighties supers turned 45, then 50 and then 55, and continued to dominate campaigns and catwalks, fashion itself changed.

This year alone, Naomi Campbell has starred in the Self-Portrait campaign, Kate Moss has fronted Emmanuelle Alt's Zara collection and Christy Turlington has signed a contract with Because. Even Linda Evangelista, 57, who last year revealed that she had been left "permanently deformed" after a fat freezing procedure, has shared a photo of herself in an upcoming Fendi campaign.

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Arguably, it is Evangelista's age that has allowed her to return to modelling despite the injuries she has suffered. "When you're a teenage model, you have to be perfect," says Greenhill. "Perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect body – all of it. But when you're in your 50s and have had children and lived a life, nobody expects perfection; in fact, some of what the brands are paying for is a few lines on your face and all the natural changes that happen to a woman's body when she's over 40. Knowing this takes so much of the stress out of the process."

Interestingly, Greenhill might have been considered too young to make it big by some agencies until very recently. Countless articles have been written over the last decade about the 'greynaissance', with women like Daphne Selfe, Iris Apfel and Maye Musk – 94, 100 and 74 respectively – fronting high fashion campaigns. And yet, much like the body positivity movement (which often promotes women of a size 20 over those of a size 12), midlife models who weren't icons have largely been left out of the conversation.

"It's a bit ridiculous if you think about it, given that women between 35 and 60 make up the majority of the shopping market," says Hannah Vere, a creative director who works on advertising campaigns for brands like Marks & Spencer. "But for a long time, the focus was either on 18-year-olds or models in their 70s and 80s with grey or white hair. Finally, though, the dial really is shifting and many of the companies I work with are starting to actively ask for women in their 40s and 50s."

Naomi Campbell at the Cannes film festival on May 23, 2022. Photo / AP

To the extent that one problem Vere faces is finding midlife models who haven't been Botoxed. "We sometimes struggle to find women from their mid-30s to mid-50s," says Vere. "It's a problem if they've had too much work done, as authenticity is what we're craving. We're after character – beauty that stops us in our tracks."

"The Italians and French are much better at embracing women of different ages, but Britain as a nation really values youth culture," says Greenhill. "This has given us incredible music and fashion, but the obsession with youth means a woman can feel invisible in London, but still be considered attractive in Milan or Paris. This is something that has to change and I hope that seeing more models in their 50s will make British women feel like they have as much to offer as women in Europe do, and also like they're part of fashion and culture in the way they were when young."

Greenhill doesn't pretend it is always easy and says some of her confidence has come from understanding how to navigate the menopause - which HRT to take and which hair serum to use to return her hormone-wrecked hair to its youthful thickness (it's from Danish brand Harklinikken if anyone is interested).

"Of course I feel invisible sometimes – every woman my age knows what that feels like – but I do feel good on shoots," she says. "I never felt that confident about my body when I was a teenager and I probably feel stronger and fitter and healthier now than I did then. Having children means I have an admiration for my body that I didn't before and like most midlife women, I'm not trying to look 40, I just want to look good for my age."