Maggie Smith’s campaign is not just a powerful statement on aging, fashion, and mortality. It’s a bold challenge to industry norms, a celebration of the raw authenticity of an 88-year-old icon’s visage
The media’s portrayal of genuinely aged faces, especially those of older women, is a rare sight. However, there are moments when these faces do manage to steal the spotlight. In October 2023, at the age of 88, Dame Maggie Smith—who passed away on Sept. 27—became the face of a striking ad campaign for luxury brand Loewe, captured by Juergen Teller in the Loewe Maggie Smith campaign. These images, some of our final glimpses of Ms. Smith at Emily Smith’s age, serve as a rare and powerful example of genuine aging in the media.
These photos, with their now poignant nature, pack a powerful punch. Yet, their true strength lies in their profound commentary on life and death, fashion and time, and even our world. They inspire us to look beyond the surface and contemplate the deeper meanings embedded in these images.
The Rise of Mature Models in Fashion
Recently, a small rise in older and mature models appeared in fashion shoots, challenging **fashion industry conventions. Isabelle Huppert, 70, occasionally represents Balenciaga; Ali McGraw modeled Chanel watches at 80; Maye Musk (Elon’s mother) graced Sports Illustrator’s 2022 swimsuit issue cover at 74; and Martha Stewart did the same last year at 81. These women and Dame Maggie Smith are paving the way for a more diverse and inclusive fashion industry, showing that age is no barrier to making waves in the modeling world.
Those photos were typical “glamour shots.” The women—known partly for their looks—appeared with styled hair and makeup, in soft lighting, posing artfully, pouting, flirting, or giving that slightly fierce “model stare.” Unlike Maggie Smith’s young pics, these pictures ask us to admire how youthful the women “still appear. “
In this way, the images suggest that old age is only praiseworthy when beaten, tamed, or somehow reversed, forced into beauty standards and norms created for the very young.
Dame Maggie Smith: A Unique Presence in Fashion
The Loewe campaign photos of Dame Maggie Smith, an iconic actress, stand apart. First, 88 isn’t 70, or even 81, like Maggie Elizabeth Jones’s age. Ms. Smith’s advanced age can’t and shouldn’t be denied. Reaching this age is an achievement, a blessing, a distinctive life. Mr. Teller’s fashion photography understood and respected this. They honored Dame Maggie Smith’s age. His images captivate with their raw encounter with their subject’s face – her deeply lined, world-weary, expressive, seemingly bare-faced, magnificent visage.
Though attractive throughout her life, Dame Maggie Smith was never a “professional beauty.” Her looks weren’t her claim to fame, unlike Gwen Stefani’s glasses 2023 or Ben Stephens’s actor age. Instead, like most top-notch actors, her face was a channel for thought or emotion, inviting viewers to look through it rather than merely at it.
The Expressive Power of Dame Maggie Smith’s Face
Not that one could overlook Dame Maggie Smith’s unique features: Her large, heavy-lidded blue eyes, sculpted jaw, and high forehead were instantly recognizable and remained striking until the very end of her life, even older than days of our lives. Maggie age.
But her face’s expressiveness, not its beauty, captivated us. Her features effortlessly conveyed sharp wit, keen intellect, and self-assurance. In her diverse roles, from Jean Brodie to Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess to Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter, Dame Maggie Smith could communicate concern, scathing disdain, or playful humor with the slightest eyebrow movement. Her facial mobility seemed to increase with age, apparently untouched by cosmetic procedures.
The Loewe Campaign: A Showcase of Facial Range
The Dame Maggie Smith Loewe photos showcase this facial range, where Dame Maggie Smith appears alternately knowing, slightly sarcastic, confrontational, and amused. Each image features her holding a different Loewe handbag, a luxury item priced between $2,000 and $4,000.
Loewe, an established European heritage house, proudly emphasizes its longevity on the Loewe Europe website: “Founded in Spain in 1846, we’re approaching 178 years as one of the world’s major luxury houses.” Like many high-end fashion brands, Loewe highlights its age to suggest quality, tradition, expertise, and value.
The Irony of Age in Fashion
Ironically, while fashion companies like Loewe showcase their age as a positive attribute, the fashion industry celebrates youth and novelty. It primarily uses exceptionally young models and constantly introduces new garments and accessories in endless collections, as seen in 89’s fashion and Spring/Summer 2024 trends.
Fashion is perpetual “now,” detached from time’s natural flow. This relentless fashion cycle has financial motivations, stimulating consumer desire and sustaining the industry. However, the costs and consequences are significant.
The Consequences of Fashion’s Youth Obsession
By fixating on youth and newness, fashion, like much of our culture, overvalues life’s beginning while neglecting its later stages – old age and death.
This approach contributes to ageism and a lack of representation. Moreover, due to overproduction, fashion (despite some sustainability efforts) remains one of the world’s most polluting industries, creating vast amounts of landfill waste and greenhouse gases that harm our planet.
This represents a form of macro-level ageism, refusing to acknowledge that our planet has a finite lifespan. It doesn’t exist in eternal, invincible youth, and we’re hastening its decline.
Fashion’s Denial of Mortality
Fashion’s obsession with the new and youthful reflects a broader cultural tendency to avoid confronting mortality. By constantly chasing the latest trends, we create a false sense of timelessness, as if we could outrun aging itself.
This denial extends beyond personal aging to our relationship with the Earth. As we struggle to accept our mortality, we often fail to recognize the planet’s vulnerability to our actions. The fashion industry’s rapid turnover of styles and materials exemplifies this shortsightedness, prioritizing immediate gratification over long-term sustainability.
The Maggie Smith Loewe Campaign: A Counterpoint to Fashion Trends
Ultimately, the Maggie Smith Loewe campaign, a powerful example of fashion advertising and celebrity endorsements, serves as a counterpoint to these trends. It reminds us of the beauty and wisdom that come with age, challenging the fashion world’s youth-centric fashion norms. By embracing Smith’s mature face, Loewe invites us to reconsider our attitudes towards aging, personally and globally.
Embracing the Full Spectrum of Life
Ms. Smith’s seasoned face, one of the few 88-year-old celebrities, beckons us to embrace life’s full spectrum, appreciating every stage without fear or longing for youth. Viewing her Loewe images post-mortem feels like peeking behind a usually closed curtain. Smith’s visage reminds us that aging might be the ultimate luxury, not needing a high-fashion makeover.
The Loewe Maggie Smith campaign promotes diversity in fashion, age representation, and the value of older and elderly models. It challenges us to expand our notions of beauty and embrace the wisdom and grace that come with a life well-lived.
Rhonda Garelick pens the Face Forward column for The Times’s Style section. She leads the Interdisciplinary Institute for Public Humanities at Hofstra University as its founding director. She also holds the John Cranford Adams Distinguished Professor of Literature position there.
Source:
Rhonda Garelick (October 7, 2024). Maggie Smith’s Face: A Lesson in Aging Gracefully. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/style/maggie-smith-loewe.html. Accessed October 7, 2024
Header Photo:
Press photo of 2 times Oscar-winning actress Dame Maggie Smith, 1970
Photo credit: N/A studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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