Grey Is The New Black

Age is not a number. Age is a doomed and inevitable conclusion, marked by wrinkles, health defects, degenerative memory loss and sending birthday cards that match neither the gender nor age of the recipient.

Ageing is a fearful process, dragged along by apprehensive changes coloured by the harrowing stigma of a deluded societal preoccupation with retaining youth. In fashion, age is the last looming taboo, following in the anxious footsteps of race, weight, height, sexuality, gender and class, but, as the quest for eternal youth reaches a dead end, it seems that boundaries have been bent to their limits.



Swishing a long silvered mane, 45 year old Kristen McMenamy is the mature yet flawless face of these rewritten cliches. Working professionally since 1985, Kristen's modelling portfolio is unfolding much further than that of her younger counterparts, even today, as she continues to mount her peak; walking for Chanel, covering Vogue and posing for Lanvin.

Beyond her age, however, is ethereal beauty drawn with covetable bone structure and willowy limbs that connote an ironic, yet innovative, sense of androgyny. She is the answer to our western woes of cosmetic obsession; rejecting directions to the fountain of youth and embracing yourself by virtue of individuality rather than in spite of it.

“The body you‘re given, the mind you‘re given, the morality and the hang ups you‘re given, they‘re yours. Deal with it. ”