Acne Studios Casts 78-Year-Old Supermodel, Reminds Us Age Is Just A Number

Age is nothing but a number, and there are plenty of gorgeous women out there proving it. From actresses such as Helen Mirren, who just seem to get better as they get older, to a new crop of high-fashion models who are in the second half of their lives, now more than ever there are examples of older women looking totally awesome and giving us #stylegoals to aspire to.

For clothing brand Acne Studios' newest lookbook, they decided to reintroduce the world to an iconic '60s-era supermodel: Veruschka von Lehndorff. In her heyday, von Lehndorff landed a whopping 11 Vogue covers. In recent years, she's reappeared, walking the runway in a Giles show at London Fashion Week in 2010 at age 71. Today, at 78, she's as fierce as ever in her 10 photos for Acne Studios, rocking denim, plaid, and leather like she was born to wear it all.

"This is a collection of Acne Studios archetypes, iconic and real, so I wanted to work with an icon for the shoot," Jonny Johansson, the brand's creative director and co-founder, said via a press release, Who What Wear reports.

2016 saw 56-year-old model Nicola Griffin become the oldest woman to ever appear in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue and follow it up with a lingerie shoot for the British curve magazine SLiNK. And 63-year-old Lyn Slater, a professor at Fordham University, was mistaken for a model and has since become a fashion icon. She's a style blogger and runs an Instagram account where she posts photos of her looking more awesome than any one person has a right to.

“It’s crazy to think that fashion models, aside from generally all being one size, are all in one age bracket, too,” Rivkie Baum, editor-in-chief of SliNK, told Refinery29 last year. “There seems to be a consensus, especially in media, that women start to become invisible not just above a size 10, but above age 50, too."

It's heartening to think that we're beginning to see women represented at all parts of the age spectrum. It's even better that we're seeing women over 50 presented as sex symbols or fashion icons, as people whose looks are desirable or even enviable. Ageism is real, and representation is the first step in overcoming it.