Lanvin ditching models for 'real' people

High-end French fashion house Lanvin will ditch professional models in favour of "real" people in its Autumn/Winter 2012 advertising campaign.

The move is an attempt by the luxury brand to make its products more accessible.

"I was interested to bring these clothes back to the street somehow, and see them on different ages, different sizes," Lanvin's creative director, Alber Elbaz, told Women's Wear Daily.

The company is jumping on a trend started by on-the-street fashion reporters like Bill Cunningham of the New York Times and Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist.

"Models are a blank canvas to project style on to, but these are people you would sit with at a party and get to know," Melanie Rickey, editor at large at Italian fashion magazine Grazia, said.

Lanvin's newest models range in age from 16 to 82, and include a waiter, a milliner and a recent US immigrant, Women's Wear Daily said. The oldest, Jackquie Tajah Murdock, is a former dancer and administrative assistant.

Ari Seth Cohen, a blogger for Advanced Style who helped cast Lanvin's campaign, discovered the stylish octogenarian walking through New York's Greenwich Village last year.

"I'm still attractive, I still perform and lecture. So why not?" Murdock told the Daily Beast.

Lanvin's men's and women's ad campaigns will appear in magazines from September.

The fashion house will release an internet video about the campaign's models on August 21.

- GNE