Fashion models just keep getting younger older. For Lanvin's fall 2012 ad campaign, the brilliant Alber Elbaz chose 'real people'. Real people like Jacquie "Tajah" Murdock a former Apollo dancer and soon to be 82 fabulous years old. Yes, that is right, 82 years old!
Jacquie and the Lanvin peplum.
On the site Fashionista, Jacquie recounts how she came to wear the green Lanvin dress.
"Well at first they brought a short dress with a great big white bow. I looked at it and thought it would have been more appropriate for a younger woman. The two ladies who were helping me said, "this is too small. We can't pull up the zipper." It must have been a size zero and I was so happy.
Then they brought me (the green dress) and it was just me. It had a neck. The green long sleeves, skirt below the knee, with a peplum in front. (Fashion Lesson Number 1: Know yourself. Fashion Lesson Number 2: Be true to yourself. Fashion Lesson Number 3: Wear what works for you.)
My mother sent me a Singer sewing machine when I was 9 or 10 and I made my first dress at 10. But then when I was 13, she had material from Haiti, a white eyelet, and my mother had a dressmaker make a two piece. The top part had a sweetheart neckline with lace and in the back was a peplum! My mother use to starch and iron it and it would shoot out. I thought I was the cat's meow."
Jacquie in the Lanvin peplum dress in the Fall 2012 ad campaign:
And what do we say to fashion when we sometimes wonder if it will still love us, will it still need us when we're 82?
We will still be the cat's meow. (sound of purring...)
