Lasting appeal

“I HAVE TO PINCH myself to believe it, but at 60 I am still working and it’s wonderful,” exclaims veteran model Marie Helvin. The Japanese-American beauty is one of the lucky few. By the time most models hit their thirties they have given up worrying whether they can still fit into size zero clothes and have settled down to raise babies.

This has never been part of Helvin’s game plan.

Fashion is a notoriously ageist business, nevertheless, Stella Tennant and Yasmin Le Bon are still on the catwalk in their ‘40s; Carmen Dell’Orefice is doing photo shoots at 81, while the svelte Helvin was recently modelling bikinis. Is the fashion industry finally taking account of its more mature clientele by using these famous role models? Helvin however, dismisses it all as “PR spin”, lamenting that they are the few exceptions, “I wish I could say designers are thinking of their core market, but it’s the industry: it means nothing [to them] and that’s a shame.”

Seeing Helvin glamorously stretched out on a chaise longue in gold haute couture and diamonds, it looks like the marketing people are wrong. Helvin, who celebrated her 60th birthday last month, can still look as effortlessly sensual as only a supermodel can. The arched eyebrow, the languorous look to camera as she models a pinstripe suit from Gaultier; she is a consummate professional and knows exactly what is required to get the best shot.

The Hawaii-raised beauty was the supermodel of the 1970s and ‘80s, with her best friend Jerry Hall, girlfriend of Mick Jagger, and was married for 10 years to legendary fashion photographer David Bailey.

Helvin is very upbeat about reaching her landmark age. “It’s how I am, it’s my spirit. When I turned 50 everyone was, ‘Ohmigod, you’re 50!’ but it was one of the best birthdays I ever had.” She believes she has been given a new lease of life with the amount of work coming her way since turning 60.

Nevertheless, is the ageing process more difficult for someone known for their beauty, especially as there is so much pressure on women to look good?

“It is just a number,” she says. “I am thrilled that I still look younger than my age. It is not something I intended, just a genetic thing.” Her Japanese mother looked 50 when she was in her 70s and once warned her daughter “women with our Mongolian blood stay beautiful longer than most, and then, overnight, they look like 2,000 years old.” It is an alarming prospect.

Helvin says she’s ageing like everyone else, “but maybe it doesn’t show because I know the tricks of cosmetics.”

Certainly her skin has a lovely luminous glow and her dramatic cheekbones are untouched by the surgeon’s scalpel. She has not done Botox but does not rule out cosmetic surgery in the future: “Still, it’s not something I want to get into just now because everything I have read says when you start, you have to continue.” Before Helvin came along, modelling had evolved from something nice girls did between secretarial school and marriage to a multi-billion-dollar industry churning out glamazons with shelf-lives shorter than a carton of low-fat milk. Discovered by Japanese cosmetic giant Kanebo as a 16-yearold schoolgirl on a beach in Hawaii, Helvin landed in London two years later, in the early 1970s, to model for Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto. The magazines were smitten by her exotic looks and Grace Coddington at British Vogue and photographer Barry Lategan soon asked her to return.