We all have goals in life. Maybe it’s to complete something physically demanding, like climbing a tall mountain or running a distance race. Maybe it’s to earn a certain educational degree or land a dream job. It could be to travel the world. Or, possibly, you just want to look as good in your fifties and sixties as you did in your twenties and thirties (we all want that).
We can’t help with most of this, but the good news is that there are dozens of women out there right now living their best, most beautiful lives well into their fifties and beyond. Sure, they might be retired supermodels so they had an edge from the start, but they are giving us serious aging (or age-defying) goals.
From Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford to Claudia Schiffer and Beverly Johnson, former supermodels are still turning heads. They made their mark in the industry years ago and continue to make strides as idols to newcomers like Adriana Lima and Gigi Hadid. Here, we take a peek at twenty leading ladies that have given up the runway but don’t look one day past their prime.
Now excuse us as we go apply more eye cream.
20 Gisele Bundchen: Quarterback Of The Industry
We have many reasons to be jealous of Gisele Bundchen, most notably that she was discovered while eating at a McDonald’s with her sisters and we can’t understand why that never happened to us. Also, according to Athlon Sports, she has an obsession with doughnuts but still manages to stay slender.
Jealousy aside, we’ve been smitten with Gisele since she first appeared at Alexander McQueen’s London show in 1998.
According to Boston, there was a lot of skepticism about this new Brazilian girl with the “large” nose that insisted on walking like a horse (raising her knees and kicking her feet out in front of her). But Gisele was ready to make a name for herself. When she stepped out with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000 (whom she dated for five years), everyone realized she wasn’t going to be shy about fame. Also, that “horse walk” became her signature move and has been copied by other models for decades.
At the time of her retirement in 2015, she was the highest paid model in the world. Her contributions to the industry were vast with Mashable crediting her as “Queen of the Catwalk”. Now, we can find Gisele (fashionably) cheering on New England Patriots quarterback husband, Tom Brady.
19 Christie Brinkley: Swimsuit Model Turned Activist
She traveled the world with the USO supporting our nation’s troops. She spoke out for animal rights and vowed not to eat meat. She held a twenty-five-year contract with CoverGirl cosmetics. She’s Christie Brinkley.
Technically, Christie Brinkley was a swimsuit model turned swimsuit model again (though she is also an activist). She first stole the cover of Sports Illustrated for the revered swimsuit edition in 1979. She did the same thing the two years following and then five more times through 2004. In her most recent return to the magazine, she was photographed in a bikini solo and with her daughters, Alexa Ray Joel (her child with musician Billy Joel) and Sailor Brinkley Cook.
At the time of the magazine’s release last year, she was 63 years young.
As she approaches her mid-sixties, Christie is fully aware that some people reject her continued involvement in the fashion industry but she has remained diligent in fighting ageism. According to the New York Post, she wants to “be in control of which wrinkles I want and which ones I don’t”. To her, age is just a number. Based on that last Sports Illustrated shoot, we’d have to agree. Plus, she’s still living on the edge. She didn’t even pierce her ears until her 50th birthday at the convincing of her daughters.
18 Cindy Crawford: From Supermodel To Supermom
She got it from her mama. But really, Kaia Gerber did get it from her mom. The 16-year-old teen sensation is the daughter and spitting image (minus the trademark mole) of supermodel Cindy Crawford (who is also mom to another model, son Presley). The good genes don’t just extend down the family tree. According to Harper’s Bazaar, Cindy’s 98-year-old and 94-year-old grandmothers also participated in a beauty-focused photo shoot late last year.
Now in her fourth-decade modeling, Crawford hasn’t technically retired but her runway appearances have lessened as she has taken to the role of manager for her starlet children. In an interview with Town & Country, she talked about staying grounded and leading by example. Though she didn’t make mention of her choice to drop out of college to pursue modeling and whether or not she would advise her children to do the same, she is good at teaching them to respect themselves and others.
Today, you can still catch Cindy modeling products such as Omega watches, a contract she has held for over twenty years, according to Town & Country. She is also still very involved in skincare products through her company, Meaningful Beauty. Of course, she makes the most time for playing number one fan to her kids in their early careers.
17 Naomi Campbell: A Fashion Goddess Earns Her Place In History
At the Council of Fashion Designers of America awards ceremony a few nights ago, Naomi Campbell was honored with the organization’s Icon Award. The response was overwhelmingly positive, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with many photographers and attendees shocked she had never before been recognized.
In her acceptance speech, Campbell acknowledged that at times the road had been a little rough but she was grateful to the extended family she had garnered in her thirty years in the industry. For her, the friends and mentors that became family meant everything. Having left her London home early to pursue her career (something her mother did, as well, in pursuit of dance), Campbell was a young girl overwhelmed in a big world. Designers like Azzedine Alaia became her parents and other models, like Christy Turlington, her sisters.
As a true icon, Campbell has appeared on countless magazine covers. Her days were spent on shoots and her nights revolved around dinner parties with the likes of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana, and Madonna. According to The Guardian, Campbell was acutely aware that the color of her skin meant she had to be twice as good. She had no problem there and has handily earned her place in history.
16 Tyra Banks: Runway Model Turned Next Top Model With A Little Help From Mom
Tyra Banks has held many titles. Model, television host, author, producer, and actress, to name a few. Perhaps, though, her most important role has been “daughter”.
Tyra credits her mother, Carolyn, for just about every success she’s had (amounting to a net worth of $90 million, according to Good Housekeeping). The two have an amazing relationship and even just wrote a book together. Titled Perfect is Boring: 10 Things My Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me About Beauty, Booty, and Being a Boss, the book details their openness and teamwork. Each writes and then the other takes over, so it seems like you’re living their lives right along with them in real-time conversational format rather than strict paragraphs. If you’re curious about the “booty” part, Tyra told W Magazine that her mom was right there to support her during weight gain and loss.
There’s supposedly some juicy tidbits in there about the end of Tyra’s Victoria’s Secret contract, as well.
After a brief hiatus, Tyra is back at the reigns of America’s Next Top Model. This past January marked its twenty-fourth season. We totally don’t blame her for taking time off. That girl has been working overtime since she was a teenager (according to Good Housekeeping, she booked an overwhelming and unheard of 25 shows during her first Fashion Week in 1991) and hasn’t slowed down since. That said, we’re glad she’s back.
15 Elle Macpherson: Fifty And Fabulous
Elle Macpherson isn’t actually fifty and fabulous. She is fifty-four and fabulous. So, how does she do it? Motivation. And how does she get motivated? According to Well+Good, she buys cute athleisure (odd, because our Lululemon pants make us want to get comfy, not sweaty). What’s more, she doesn’t believe in scales. She is more interested in how her body feels than a number.
Australian Elle Macpherson (born Eleanor but quickly shortened to Elle because her younger sister couldn’t say her full name) rose to fame with grace. She has always enjoyed adventure and, according to Vanity Fair, she adventured to New York City after high school just to see what it might be like to try modeling for a few months. Humbled by her instant success, she knew she couldn’t get too carried away with this lifestyle. She was making this career choice for herself and nobody else.
Nicknamed “The Body”, Macpherson was never all that interested in fashion. Sure, she appeared in many magazines, including a record number of times in Elle, but it didn’t suit her. So, when approached by Sports Illustrated for a swimsuit edition that had nothing to do with fashion, she obliged. The response was overwhelming and she took the cover spot on the magazine in 1986, 1987, and 1988.
14 Heidi Klum: From Walking The Stage In Someone Else’s Clothing To Designing Her Own
The media is a little crazed right now with news of Heidi Klum’s vacation to Mexico with her boyfriend, but we’re not going to talk about that (aside from saying that the two really seem to be getting along, based on pictures).
According to DW, there are two successful, powerhouse female Germans that have become household names: Angela Merkel and Heidi Klum. In no offense to Angela, Heidi has a few more magazine covers. The woman even has her own Barbie doll (a collaboration with Mattel for the 50th anniversary of Barbie in 2009), a bite-sized supermodel in her own right. We’re on a first-name basis with her. If you’re talking about “Heidi”, people know what that means without any reference to the last name. Kind of like Seal…
Wanting to bring model-inspired fashion to everyday people, Heidi has designed several lines of clothing. According to Vogue, her latest is a fun, affordable, empowering line in partnership with German supermarket chain, Lidl. Reportedly, her leopard print ensemble can’t stay on the shelves long enough.
As a judge on German’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, and America’s Got Talent, Heidi has channeled her Victoria’s Secret runway days into a television empire. If she can manage to add one more thing to her plate, she is extremely eager to join the cast of Sex and the City should our favorite New York City ladies decide on a third movie.
13 Linda Evangelista: Famous Enough To Be A Trivia Question
Linda Evangelista once said she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 per day, according to ABC. And with that, she set a precedent that models expected to be paid their worth.
This famous quote came back into Linda’s life recently when her young son’s school trivia team was faced with a question about its author. He was able to answer, with confidence, that it was, in fact, his mother (and he won a hearty prize for his knowledge, according to The Star).
While many of us probably settle for much less than $10,000 per day, Linda’s life has been worthy of such extravagance.
She began her modeling career at age 19 when she moved from her native Canada to New York City. In an effort to ensure she had something that stood out on her resume, she learned to play the accordion. She cut off her long, brown hair and the style was dubbed “The Linda” (which is what we had before “The Rachel”). According to Interview Magazine, her agent told her an average, good career was three years long. She sure showed them.
The now 53-year-old can look back on her successful career in the fashion world and remember the one time she appeared in a George Michael music video. Maybe that’s the next trivia question.
12 Tatjana Patitz: An International Icon For The Ages
One of the original “big five” (Patitz, Campbell, Crawford, Evangelista, Turlington), Tatjana Patitz gained international fame in the 1980s. Patitz was born in Germany and raised in Sweden. Her fair skin and bright blue eyes instantly attracted light at various angles, earning her a modeling contract in Paris at age seventeen. In 1990, she and the other “big five” models were photographed together. The image made it onto the cover of British Vogue (still one of the most talked about covers) and the rest was history.
In an interview with Prestige, Tatjana recounts falling into modeling rather than actively pursuing it (something others have mentioned, as well). She did everything that was asked of her, including weeks-long shoots in foreign countries where six people touched, dressed, and maneuvered her at once. She recalls having no privacy which, much to her chagrin, is unlike how models become famous in their bedrooms now using platforms like Instagram (she has a strong dislike of social media).
Though she still is often booked for product shoots with L’Oréal (and recently made the cover of Marie Claire), Tatjana would much rather be at home sporting a t-shirt, blue jeans, and riding boots while tending to her horses.
11 Kate Moss: An English Showstopper Makes Her Way Back To America
The return of Kate Moss to the United States was, well, very Kate Moss. After nearly ten years without so much as stepping foot on American ground (due to some Visa issues, according to W Magazine, not because she didn’t want to visit) she arrived in New York City just before this year’s Met Gala wearing a leather jacket adorned with the words “Make America Kate Again”.
2018 marked Kate’s first return to the Met Gala since she co-hosted in 2009 with the designer, Marc Jacobs, and entertainer, Justin Timberlake. While many hoped she would wear the jacket to the actual event, she opted for a little black dress (with a little something extra) by Saint Laurent. She looked as stunning as ever.
Kate Moss embraced an unconventional, bad-girl image in the fashion industry and it has only helped her career. She has always been too recognizable to conceal herself on the street, so she stopped trying. Her silence has constantly been a shroud of mystery, the paparazzi trying for years to figure her out and designers begging for a chance to dress her just to get a little closer to the indomitable confidence of Kate Moss like Calvin Klein first did in 1996.
10 Carla Bruni: A Supermodel With A Flair For Singing
When your husband is the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, there’s already a lot of talk about you. Add in the fact that you used to be a supermodel and jaws will drop. This is the life of Carla Bruni.
From 1987-1997, Italian-born Bruni modeled for some of the biggest fashion houses, such as Dior, Givenchy, and Versace. However, her true passion was always music. She left the runway to pursue singing and songwriting, dating musical legends such as Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton along the way. Her first album was released in 2002, with four others following. She took a small break to tend to the country, finding it difficult to balance the demands of the First Lady with her own interests according to Vanity Fair.
Now that she doesn’t have to focus on being France’s First Lady, she can get back to her music.
Earlier this year, Carla completed a North American tour for her new album, French Touch. The compilation of cover songs in English is designed to make you feel like Carla is in the room singing just to you, according to The Hollywood Reporter. We haven’t given it a listen yet, but she is without a doubt a woman of many talents.
9 Christy Turlington: From Couture To Charity And Campaigns
Of course she’s beautiful, but even more so words like “authentic”, “bubbly”, “friendly”, and “happy” have been used to describe Christy Turlington. According to The Guardian, she invited Naomi Campbell to be her roommate within moments of meeting her. That’s just the type of person she is.
Another word frequently used to describe Christy is “supermodel”. According to Town & Country, she doesn’t actually like the term and never saw herself as anyone to be put up on a pedestal. Preferences aside, Christy Turlington Burns (as she is now known following her marriage to director Ed Burns) put Calvin Klein on the map in 1988 before being snapped up by numerous other fashion houses.
Never having been a person to focus on just one thing at a time, Christy pursued both a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree during her modeling years.
With the runway eventually behind her, she put her education to work to start a nonprofit organization called Every Mother Counts that helps make childbirth safer for women everywhere. She has also been actively involved with various AIDS campaigns.
You can catch her nowadays training for a marathon (she’s run several in support of Every Mother Counts) or supporting other models that want to go back to school (she recently wrote a letter of recommendation for Karlie Kloss).
8 Claudia Schiffer: Still In The Limelight And Still Turning Heads
$267,000. According to Page Six, that’s (roughly) what Claudia Schiffer took home for the one minute she was seen in every millennial’s favorite movie, Love Actually (she played Carol, Liam Neeson’s hallway crush). But Claudia has been so much more than those sixty seconds.
According to Crossroads, she holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for being featured on the most magazine covers (over 1000). The covers include a particularly memorable appearance in Playboy. The former face of Chanel and Guess has also acted in fourteen films and music videos. IMDb even lists her appearing as herself in eighty-four shows across a twenty-five-year span.
When she’s not on camera, she is perfecting her self-titled makeup, haircare, knitwear, or hosiery product line. She has also been known to hang around on set with her film director husband, Matthew Vaughn. According to Vanity Fair, she co-executive produced his latest feature, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and provided the cosmetics for the cast.
So what’s left for someone who’s had that much success? Claudia told Harper’s Bazaar her bucket list won’t be complete until she plays the piano with Elton John. She also wants to study organic cooking and take a mixology class.
7 Helena Christensen: Miss Universe Contestant Paves The Way For Other Angels
In 1986, a new Miss Universe Denmark was crowned. That crown went to Helena Christensen, just shy of her twentieth birthday. Helena went on to the Miss Universe pageant and started modeling shortly afterward. Her career led her first to the likes of Prada and Valentino and then onto Victoria’s Secret where she famously represented the brand as an Angel.
According to The Guardian, Helena started out as a photographer. As the person behind the camera, the transition to the front of the lens was a little out of the ordinary for her. She would often pause a shoot to ask questions about the camera, lessons the best photographers in the industry were happy to share.
She has grown to be an accomplished photographer in her own right with many of her pictures adorning the pages of magazines on which she was formerly a subject.
In 2017, 49-year-old Helena joined the other original supermodels for a walk down the runway at Milan Fashion Week to honor the twentieth anniversary of Gianni Versace’s death. Dressed head to toe in gold shimmer, she looked as natural up there as ever. She is also helping Cindy Crawford adjust to life as the mother of a model. Helena’s own son, Mingus, has walked many a catwalk in his short career thus far.
6 Paulina Porizkova: Fighting For Feminism
Don’t ever try to tell Paulina Porizkova that you cannot be both a supermodel and a leader in feminism. The European beauty and former cover girl traipsed through a career in which people cared more about what she looked like than what she thought. She didn’t think feminism was something she needed to care about. But times have changed and she is taking a stand.
In a 2017 New York Times opinion piece, Paulina wrote a first-hand account of her journey as a young girl from the Czech Republic to Sweden, and then as a woman from Paris to the United States. She compared the differing views of women and their roles in these places, noting first an assertiveness by females in Sweden to own their thoughts, bodies, and careers. When she moved to Paris at age 15 to model, she was struck by how patronizing she found the experience to be. Then, upon reaching the United States, she felt that women were being told they could be anything but were promptly ridiculed anytime they tried. According to her, “America made me a feminist”.
With an eye set firmly on the future, Paulina hopes to help empower women and move the needle further on feminism. But she is also making time for one more runway show. According to Reclaimed Woman, she will close a show at London Fashion Week in September wearing Czech eco-friendly designer, Jiri Kalfar.
5 Niki Taylor: From Tragedy To Triumph
Niki and Krissy Taylor were inseparable. So much so, they even appeared on magazine covers together. Niki, the older of the two, had already shot two major covers (Seventeen and Vogue) before her 16th birthday.
Eventually, she brought her little sister into the modeling world where she was poised to have as much early success on the runway and off as Niki.
Then tragedy struck.
According to Vogue, Krissy died “suddenly and unexpectedly” at the age of seventeen due to a heart defect that had gone undetected. Niki was devastated. Not only did she lose her sister, she lost her best friend and modeling, partner. She continued working, but it wasn’t the same.
Fast forward six years and it was Niki that nearly lost her life. The twenty-six-year-old was involved in a car accident that left her severely injured. She required numerous operations, a three-month hospital stay, and years of physical therapy afterward. For other people, this might have been the end of any hope of a career in the industry. But Niki had the drive to move forward, she had to do it for Krissy. She continued a successful modeling career and found even more satisfying success as a spokesperson for the Red Cross – an organization she credits with saving her life.
4 Janice Dickinson: Finding New Fans Through Writing
From television to the runway and, more seriously, her recent testimony in the Bill Cosby trial, Janice Dickinson has always been one to speak the truth. Her honesty is the best policy mantra famously got her kicked off America’s Next Top Model. Tyra felt she was too harshly judging and ridiculing the girls (but then she got her own show where she could continue being “Simon Cowell to the modeling world”). However, it has paid dividends in her three tell-all memoirs that detail everything from modeling to dating and plastic surgery.
Though there is some question as to whether or not Janice is the “original supermodel” as she and others claim, she is pretty super.
The now-63-year-old was initially rejected as a model for not having the blonde hair and blue eyes that were popular in the 1970s. True to Janice’s style, that didn’t stop her and she went on to earn a spot on several magazines covers over the years.
In 2016, still in the public eye with multiple product advertisements, Janice revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. According to People she underwent treatment and is now encouraging others to listen to their bodies, something she ignored for many years. Maybe we will see another book in the near future?
3 Beverly Johnson: A Woman Changes The Face Of Vogue Forever
If you don’t know Beverly Johnson’s name, you should. In 1974, she made the cover of Vogue. While this is admirable, you might be thinking that women had been doing the same thing for decades prior and are still doing it. What made this cover different is that for the first time it featured an African American woman.
According to BBC, twenty-one-year-old Beverly Johnson had only been modeling for a few years in 1974. It was her dream to be on the cover of Vogue, but she had no idea she would be the first black woman to do so (she assumed by 1974 that had already happened) and that it would be such a big deal. She didn’t even know it was a cover shoot until the magazine came out later. She was stunned because she had been having such a hard time finding work. According to Vogue, within a year of their own cover piece, nearly all fashion magazines carved out a place among their pages for black models.
There’s still a lot of work to be done in the name of equality, but we owe Beverly Johnson much gratitude for her role in opening doors for other black models. Thanks to her, little girls of color had someone that looked like them to admire. Little girls like Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell.
2 Kelly Emberg: The Model Gardener Sows Her Seeds
That Kelly Emberg can still look amazing with grass-stained jeans, hat-head, and soil under her fingernails says something about her radiant beauty.
As a high school senior in Houston, Texas, Kelly jumped at the chance to move to New York City to model and see something new. According to Discover North County Magazine, it was actually her mother that pushed her into it (a role reversal from many other models whose mothers would prefer they not take a huge risk to model). She was constantly on the move, traveling the world to shoot with all the best photographers for top magazines.
As any busy person can attest, sometimes it’s easier to just pop in a microwave dinner or open a can of food rather than spend time fixing a meal.
Kelly did that for years during her modeling career, but then something changed.
Kelly began doing interior design, a longtime passion of hers that had been shoved to the side. And she was good. Really good. So good, in fact, that her former partner, Rod Stewart, and his wife hired her to design their home. Taking the design idea from inside to outside, Kelly started experimenting with flowers, fruits, and vegetables in a greenhouse. Now known as the “model gardener”, Kelly has her own website and YouTube channel to help others hone their green thumb.
1 Veronica Webb: Making Beauty Into A Blog
According to Vogue, fashion was Veronica Webb’s first love. It’s been an unconditional love that has spanned over five decades across designers such as Versace and Chanel. A nostalgic love that took Veronica out of Detroit to New York City and then into the homes of people around the world in the 1990s in magazines and on the runway for the first Victoria’s Secret show. To her, fashion was creating chaos and out of it came something magnificent. Everyone worked off of film in those days, nothing was digital, so you had to do your best every single time and work with what you had. There were no breaks between shots to review the most recent picture taken before continuing, you just had to do it.
As eloquent of a speaker just as much as a beautiful model, Veronica has held onto her love of fashion and incorporated it into writing. Her lifestyle blog, Webb On The Fly, has something for everyone with videos, tips, and articles on fashion, fitness, pro-aging (as opposed to anti-aging), parenting, and beauty.
Her life lesson for the younger generation to remember (because they won’t be young forever): you’re never too old to try something new.
References: Boston, Athlon Sports, Mashable, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, The Star, Interview Magazine, Prestige, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, Town & Country, Page Six, Crossroads, IMDb, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, The Guardian, New York Times, Reclaimed Woman, Good Housekeeping, W Magazine, Well+Good, Vanity Fair, Vogue, DW, Vogue, People, BBC, Vogue, New York Post, W Magazine, Discover North County, Vogue
