The grey matter

My piece on the vogue for dyeing hair... grey - from the Indo's Weekend mag last Saturday.

Elizabeth Taylor, hair still blue-black into her 78th year, has not got the memo that grey is in vogue. Stars such as Helen Mirren, Jamie Lee Curtis, Diane Keaton and Emmylou Harris have been noticeably growing old grey-cefully in recent years and earning applause for it.

But the appearance of gunmetal and silver shades is no longer the preserve of the ageing. For some young hipsters, going grey is something to dye for. Pixie Geldof traded in her trademark peroxide crop for grey, saying: "I'd been blonde for three years and fancied a change." Kelly Osbourne looked lovely in mauve earlier this year, and pop star Pink has been tinting her platinum locks silver-grey.

As style fads go it's an interesting one, not least because fashion normally rejects anything that suggests ageing -- and because it doesn't seem to be going away.

The August edition of US 'Vogue' sported a photograph of a model with waist-length silver-grey hair, sleek as a cat in polo neck and pencil skirt, suggesting that grey will be good at least into autumn/winter 2010.

Supermodel Kristen McMenamy has just done a shoot for cutting-edge fashion and culture mag 'Dazed & Confused', long grey locks rolling over her shoulders.

The notoriously fickle world of high fashion has even been showing some consistency on the grey matter. Two years ago, silver-haired models began to appear on the Parisian catwalks for Givenchy. This year, Calvin Klein sent out a model with a slick salt-and-pepper ponytail to showcase its autumn/winter collection. Designers Giles Deacon and Gareth Pugh also turned their models' hair the colour of concrete for their 2010 shows.

As Meryl Streep's Anna Wintour-esque fashion mag editor explains in 'The Devil Wears Prada', trends work on a trickle-down basis. First they appear on the catwalk, then on the back of some wealthy haute-couture client, then get mass exposure from influential celebrities before finally winding their way down to the woman on the street.

The celebrity advocates have surely now reached tipping point. Two huge trendsetters on either side of the Atlantic have been at the toner bottle. In the US, Ashley Olsen reinvented the blue rinse by sporting blue-grey highlights in her tousled hair, while Kate Moss got skunk streaks to launch her collaboration with Longchamps.

As with her skinny-jeans-tucked-into-boots combo, are we next?

Sharon Rice, stylist with cutting-edge hair and beauty salon Brown Sugar in Dublin, says: "Things like that do catch on. It's different from when we've had people in the past who were going grey and coming into us looking to enhance it rather than hide it. Or someone who has short blonde hair, they might add tones of silver.

"We haven't seen younger people coming in yet actively looking to dye their hair grey, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens and we would welcome it because we love doing adventurous stuff."

This slightly rebellious idea of turning one's hair grey when so many in the world spend a fortune on covering their natural greys is key to why the trend has taken off. Pixie Geldof, for example, was not worried that she'd be mistaken for her badger-headed dad Bob, saying of her grey 'do': "It was rad".

When younger people experiment with grey, they wear it with the confidence that it won't make them look prematurely old because they don't have the wrinkles to match. This was especially true of a fashion blogger called Tavi (her surname is Gevinson, but the 'biz' is so in awe of her that she's been given the first-name-only respect).

Tavi is remarkable for many reasons. She's only 13, but she always bags front-row seats at major catwalk shows because her blog is so influential. She also stood out when she turned up at New York Fashion Week sporting a short, grey hairdo. She dyed her hair a soft baby blue a few weeks earlier so that it would have faded to the correct tone of granny-chic grey by the time she appeared front row at the shows.

Sadly, the grey trend doesn't mean that the fashion and beauty industry is suddenly embracing the ageing process. Barack Obama was accused (falsely, of course) in the early days of his US Presidency of adding grey to his hair for extra gravitas. No one would ever accuse a woman of the same. Men get the 'Clooney' and 'distinguished' tags when they start to go silver at the temples; greying women are more likely to face insinuations that they have let themselves go.

Saying that, this wouldn't be the first time grey has had its go on the fashion merry-go-round. Men and women alike went crazy for dove-grey locks in the 1700s, sometimes wearing wigs to get the full halo effect. Otherwise, they powdered their hair white, oiling it to make the powder stick. It was messy, it was smelly and it ruined expensive clothing, but it was de rigueur for the fashionable set.

Marie Antoinette, the trendsetter of her time, loved wig powder to the point of losing her head over it. Her liberal use of the powder was condemned as another sign of her extravagant tastes as the rest of 18th-century France struggled with poverty. There was her country suffering through the Flour War of 1775, and there she was using enough flour in her hair each morning to feed a large family.

By the turn of the century, the English had laid a heavy tax on hair powder and the grey days of Marie Antoinette were over. One hundred years later, in 1907, L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller had created the first synthetic dye. By this stage, the average life expectancy had increased from around 37 years in 1800 to 47 years in 1900. The appeal of going grey for fashion was considerably lessened by the fact that people were living long enough to see their hair fade naturally.

Now that home hair dye is readily and cheaply available -- it's a €3 billion industry in the EU alone -- perhaps going grey has a chance for a comeback as a fashion statement because it is a choice, not an inevitability. Rod Stanley, editor of 'Dazed & Confused', said it "remained to be seen" if grey was here to stay. "The trend for younger people dying their hair grey is a different thing in many ways but, of course, that could make people more receptive to naturally grey hair in images." Or as Kristen McMenamy puts it herself: "You can get older and still be rock'n'roll."

Here's hoping Pixie Geldof is still rocking a head of granite highlights in her 60s.

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/beauty/the-grey-matter-2306506.html#ixzz0xRkSD33l

Going for the burn

Critics of Big Brother have never been convinced that the reality TV show has any merit as a social experiment. Yet, as the final series draws to a close, it can be credited with teaching us one thing -- people love to tan.

While the design of the house, the challenges and the levels of mental stability among housemates have varied wildly across its 11 series, the sunbathing in the garden has remained a constant. The sight of the contestants lounging around the outdoor area in bikinis and boxers has become as familiar an image of summer as newspaper pics of children eating ice-cream cones.

The 'hot or not' style barometers in women's magazines will occasionally declare that the tanned look is over and that pale is the holy grail of high fashion.

Porcelain-skinned model Agyness Deyn graced the cover of the July edition of British Vogue under the headline 'White Heat'. In the same high-summer month last year, famously pale actress Julianne Moore was the magazine's cover girl.

On the ground, and in our back gardens, it is a different story. A tan has most certainly not fallen out of favour. There is probably a heightened awareness of the dangers of excessive sun, but the market for sunless tanning is steady.

One of the success stories of the last series of entrepreneurial TV show Dragon's Den was TanOrganic, an organic self-tan lotion developed in Ireland. Its creator, Noelle O'Connor, was confident there was a market here, despite the recession. "Irish women are the biggest users of fake tan per capita in the world," she said.

Friends Donna Ledwidge (see panel) and Frances Brennan recently launched another new Irish self-tanner, Wow Brown, directly as the result of a demand from customers for a take-home version of the one they created for their Dublin salon.

"Putting on your tan has become as regular as putting on your make-up," says Donna.

Last week, two of the (male) contestants in the Big Brother house didn't think twice about spending the evening applying fake tan to each other. Pale might be interesting but many seem to prefer living in the bronze age.

What is it about a golden glow that makes us feel better about ourselves? Fans of the tan will claim that it makes them look thinner and more toned. Rosemary Scott, senior health promotion advisor with the Irish Cancer Society, says the celebrity influence is also very strong.

"You do see the presentation of certain 'pale' celebrities like Nicole Kidman and the girl from Girls Aloud but for the most part, celebrities are still very tanned," she says. "The message overall is that the tan is still important."

Certain high-profile fake tan brands believe that capitalising on this starry association boosts sales. How else would we be aware that Vita Liberate is the fake tan of choice for X-Factor contestants; that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are fans of Fake Bake; or that Victoria Beckham had a St Tropez spray tan booth installed in her home?

It's not that this generation is particularly susceptible to celebrity. High fashion icon Coco Chanel is credited with making the tan fashionable in the 1920s and the appearance of a deeply-bronzed Brigitte Bardot in 1956's And God Created Woman popularised the trend.

Some scientists argue that our positive thoughts about tanned skin are as much about how we feel as how we look. Sunshine stimulates the pineal gland to produce mood-improving chemicals. Research has shown that stock markets rise on sunny days because investors mistake their happiness for confidence in the stocks. On cloudy days, sales of chocolate, cigarettes, coffee and alcohol go up as we try to elevate our mood.

Behavioural psychologists at Monmouth University in the US say that we are more likely to be generous on sunny days. Bellhops in gamblers' paradise Atlantic City found that when they told hotel customers in windowless rooms that it was sunny outside they earned higher tips than when they told them it was grey. Even the promise of sunshine makes us nicer.

In this way, the popularity of the tan is partly a byproduct of the popularity of the sun. Despite the sunsafe campaigns of recent years, the fact that we don't always fake it to make it was written in scaldmarks all over the crowds who flocked to parks and beaches to roast in last month's hot spell.

We know it's not good for us to burn -- but the dangers are pushed away in favour of the short-term gratification. Cases of melanoma skin cancer in Ireland rose by 92pc between 1998 and 2008, from 393 diagnoses to 756. This reflects the damage done decades ago when we were pretty much ignorant of any fallout from baring our goosepimpled, white, Irish skin to the sun.

"People are getting the message," says Rosemary Scott, "even so, you do need to keep saying it and saying it. In the 15-44 years age group, it is still the third biggest cancer. People should know that even though the sun is gone, 80pc of harmful UV radiation can get through cloud cover."

The Department of Health's proposal to ban the use of sunbeds to the under-18s is welcomed by cancer specialists -- but the fact that such a ban had to be brought in at all reflects their ongoing popularity.

David Treacy of Tanzone solariums says that the use of sunbeds has decreased but that there is still a strong seasonal clientele of people -- he estimates around 80pc are women -- coming in to get a 'base' colour for their holidays.

Treacy is adamant that "with sunbeds, if you don't burn, you're not increasing the risk of getting skin cancer".

On the opposite side is the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which last month recommended tanning machines be moved to the "highest cancer risk category" alongside cigarettes and asbestos. The question is, where do the rest of us sit on the question?

Do we believe that any tan is merely a sign of skin damage, or do we still secretly believe in a moderate "healthy" glow?

The answer might lie in our reaction to the term "tanorexic", often used to poke fun at mahogany-tanned celebs like Katie Price and Victoria Beckham. It's bandied about in the same way as someone might say they are a chocoholic, as in a habit that's silly and indulgent but ultimately not that harmful.

Hypnotherapist Katie-Jane Goldin says that, on the contrary, excessive tanning can be the outward manifestation of a very serious addiction.

Researchers at the University of New York this year published a study that found a small proportion of "indoor tanners" were hooked on their tanning sessions in the same way others are dependent on alcohol or drugs.

"They can be addicted to fake tan or sunbeds," says Katie-Jane. "Parents have brought in their teenage daughters who were practically luminescent from fake tan. They don't see what everyone else sees -- in essence, it's a form of body dysmorphia."

Katie-Jane notes that the 'Twilight effect' of teen heart-throb vampire Robert Pattinson has taken a bite out of the popularity of the tan.

"Saying that, the tan has been popular for so long, and we're so invested in it, that it has become an automatic way of thinking."

It may take more than a pair of wan-faced teens to change that.

* DONNA LEDWIDGE is a beauty therapist and co-creator of Wow Brown self-tan.

"To be honest, I probably created Wow Brown for myself because I am one of those Irish people who just can't take a tan. Traditional fake tan doesn't develop well on Irish skin -- our skin is thinner and we have a reddy-pink undertone so trying to get a golden glow rather than an orange one used to be difficult.

"I would wear it all year round. It's as big a part of the average beauty routine now as putting on make-up. You feel slimmer, your cellulite looks better when you're tanned. I wouldn't leave the house without it.

"We don't spray tan anyone under 16 -- we want to let girls be girls -- but they are always going to get a bottle from somewhere.

"Our salon is in Donnybrook (Dublin 4) so we get to see all the girls marching up to Wesley disco every Friday night, wearing the Ugg boots, the blonde hair and lashings of fake tan. It's like a uniform now and I think it's here to stay."

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/beauty/why-we-still-think-bronzing-is-tantastic-2273230.html

Come out with your hands up

From last Saturday's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent
By Susan Daly


Remember that old kiddies' rhyme,"Heads, shoulders, knees and toes"? We didn't know it then, twirling around on our dainty little toes and smooth, youthful pins, but that rhyme was prophetic.

In the age of body consciousness, we've come to obsess over every minute part of ourselves. It started with facelifts. The nip and tuck is no longer the preserve of the ageing Hollywood starlet: it's now a high-street commodity.

In Ireland, we spend roughly the same amount on cosmetic procedures a year -- €55m -- as we do on our supposed national obsession, tea bags.

As the spotlight on the perfect figure grows stronger, no body part is safe from scrutiny. The focus now intensifies steadily from head to toe. Demi Moore got a kneelift when she decided her patellas were less than perfect. Fashion victims found fault with their feet and started injecting derma fillers into their soles to help them stand upright in skyscraper stilettos.

Now it's hands that are under fire. Sarah Jessica Parker, often pilloried for her unconventional looks, is taking a battering for her "bony" fingers. Pictures of her at the recent premiere of Sex and the City 2 were accompanied by bitchy critiques of the "bulging veins" on her hands and arms. The usual unmerciful comments about having the face of a horse were replaced by jibes about having the hands of a man.

Marie Claire magazine found her mitts so unsightly that they did a complete Photoshop job on them for the cover of their June edition. They were plumped up and smoothed out, with no protruding knuckles and no throbbing veins.

Cameron Diaz and Angelina Jolie have also suffered the barbs of the 'granny hands' police for having less than dainty digits. In a mild foreshadow of what was to come, Diaz was lambasted some years back for turning up to the Oscars with chipped nail polish. Anything but top-to-toe perfection is inexcusable on the red carpet.

Now she's accused of sacrificing her hands to her surfing hobby, letting them shrivel up and roughen in the sea and sun of the Californian coast. Jolie's skinny hands are often ringfenced as proof that it may not be possible to be too rich, but it is possible to be too thin.

This sudden focus on the hands is certainly linked with the overall body-beautiful obsession. Even Kate Moss has used a hand double for close-up shots in a Rimmel make-up advertisement. Ironically, the ad was for Renew and Lift foundation. The tagline? Look and feel years younger.

Social critic and psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Bodies, says: "Our bodies are increasingly being experienced as objects to be honed and worked on. What I am seeing is franticness about having to get a body. I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update."

The result is that an aggressive anti-ageing campaign on the face and body shows up a pair of withering hands like never before. Madonna, for example, has the body of a teenager, the face of a twentysomething, but the hands of a middle-aged woman. Her hands are the age they should be, but they look weird because they don't match the rest of her preternaturally youthful bits and bobs.

Columnist Julie Burchill, writing to "celebrate" Madonna's 50th birthday in 2008, said: "I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile, veiny hands, that sad stringy neck -- yuck."

That's the sisterhood for you.

Teri Hatcher, incidentally the same age as SJP at 45, has similarly been roasted for letting the appearance of her hands betray her full age. They might be holding back the years on their faces, but the hands are giving the game away.

Comedian Lucille Ball once suggested that the secret to staying young-looking was to live well, eat slowly and "lie about your age". That's not so easy when your hands are doing the talking for you.

Cosmetic doctor Katherine Mulrooney, of The Clinic in Dublin's Sandymount Green, says she's not surprised hands have become the telltale mark of a person's true age and lifestyle. "People were mostly concerned with their face, neck and chest area up to now," she says. "But the hands are constantly being used and abused. The poor old hands get a terrible hammering."

Even exercise -- so vital for a celebrity's slim-line credentials -- is a vice when it comes to how it makes the hands look. Overzealous cardio workouts increase blood flow and can lead to enlarged veins. Coupled with low body fat, they are both more prominent and easily noticed.

Up until recently, not much could be done about it. Josephine Allen, manicurist to stars such as Julia Roberts and Heidi Klum, says the most she could give her clients was this homespun gem: "If you want to look younger, hold your hands up -- sit with them raised during dinner so the blood flows down and veins appear smaller."

Hands are just too difficult to operate on. The practicalities are that hands can't afford to be frozen or made any way immobile by the traditional surgical 'lifts'. The increasing demand for youthful paws to match frozen-in-time faces, however, has motivated the cosmetic industry to find alternatives.

What it has come up with are topical treatments to treat sun damage, and injectable fillers or fat from elsewhere on a person's body to plump out the hands and make them look fuller and less gaunt.

"The hands are one of the most sun-exposed sites," says Dr Mulrooney. "Photo damage counts for a lot of the manifestation of skin-ageing; collagen breaks down, the hand appears more bony, the skin crepey and the skin acquires sun-damage brown spots. What has happened now is that the more they do to rejuvenate their faces, the more they notice their hands by contrast."

Dr Mulrooney says fillers injected between the metacarpals are becoming popular, as are intense pulsed light (IPL) lasers or fractionalised lasers carried out over a course of a couple of months to treat unwanted pigmentation. A full hand makeover will run you into thousands of euro.

"At the moment, it's a bit like the toe surgery some people have to fit into their fancy designer shoes," she says. "It's never going to be as massive a thing as Botox, but there's definitely a demand for it."

Vivian Diller, a psychotherapist who wrote about women's feelings on ageing in her recent book Face It, wonders, though, if the eternal pursuit for youth is as good for our mind as for our toned-up body parts.

"I have a client who is a cosmetic surgeon," she says. "He talks about how strange it is to treat an 80-year-old who has the breasts of a 20-year old. Body parts are out of sync. How do women feel when parts of their body look young and other parts don't? The psychology of this is not being talked about."

For those not yet willing to put their hands in a doctor's hands, you can take the less worrisome precautions of sunblock and moisturising.

Or if the damage is done, constantly wearing a pair of white cotton gloves might make you look as if you're auditioning for My Fair Lady, but you'll be keeping your hands -- and age -- to yourself.

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/beauty/come-out-with-your-hands-up-2227387.html#ixzz0rW0fCS8O

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/beauty/come-out-with-your-hands-up-2227387.html

Still in Vogue

Fabulous at 40 - how does Naomi do it?
It's the veteran supermodel's birthday today and she looks stunning. Susan Daly susses out her secrets and sees how her contemporaries are doing.
Saturday May 22 2010

Turning 40 is a milestone by anyone's measure. Turning 40 when you're one of the world's most scrutinised models is monumental. Naomi Campbell, who reaches the big 4-0 today, is a rare exception in an industry ruled by youth and beauty.

So remarkable is her career longevity that Oprah Winfrey dedicated an hour-long special to Campbell earlier this month. It was pitched as the world's most powerful black woman getting to the core of the world's most beautiful black woman. The conversation ranged from why she's such an angry person -- a fear of abandonment apparently -- to her friendship with Nelson Mandela.

In reality, Winfrey's viewers probably couldn't care less about Campbell's core. The biggest question as Campbell gets into her fifth decade is purely superficial: How the hell does she still look so good?

There was a riveting segment in the Winfrey special in which Campbell makes a video diary of her new home town of Moscow where she lives with billionaire boyfriend Vladislav Doronin. In her whistlestop tour of the city, she points out a traditional spot for newlyweds to have their photographs taken and deigns to step into a few group shots.

The rigidly fixed smiles of the unfortunate brides say it all. Even at 40, Naomi Campbell is the last person any woman wants to be snapped standing beside on her big day.

Good genes clearly have a lot to answer for: Campbell has always had cheekbones you could hang a Philip Treacy hat on. Yet surely it takes more than a decent bone structure to hold back the ravages of a heady lifestyle.

She has admitted to having worked hard and played harder at the height of her 1990s fame. She was a regular fixture on the party scene as on the catwalk, stepping out with high-profile boyfriends like Robert de Niro, Mike Tyson and ex-fiance Adam Clayton of U2. When her friend, designer Gianni Versace, was shot dead in 1997 she slid into a pattern of drug use that came to a head when she collapsed at a photo shoot in 1999.

"I felt like I couldn't keep up with the grief, so I just started replacing it with drugs," she said. Two months ago, she admitted: "I thought I'd never actually make this birthday."

Little trace of this hard living is visible on Campbell's unlined face and lithe, toned limbs. She was recently papped on her boyfriend's yacht, wearing a tiny bikini and showing off a body most 20-year-olds would envy.

Eleven years ago she told Playboy magazine the secret to her banging bod: "I never diet. I smoke. I drink now and then. I never work out." If the smoking/drinking/no diet or exercise regime was a real winner, wouldn't we all be supermodels?

"Naomi Campbell is pretty unique," concedes 1st Options model agency boss Trish Fallon. "My sister Jules (and business partner) once met Naomi and her mum, and her mother is also absolutely stunning. But if you look at Naomi's body -- it's like an Olympic athlete's. She is definitely following a regime to keep herself in tip-top condition."

Campbell may have burned the candle at both ends from time to time but, says Fallon, she is a real contrast to her contemporary, 36-year-old Kate Moss. "Let's be honest, Kate Moss isn't looking great," says Fallon. "I love her but look at her skin, her teeth, her eyes -- her lifestyle has really started to catch up with her."

Campbell insists that she's never invited the helping hand of a plastic surgeon. Dr Katherine Mulrooney, dermatologist and cosmetic doctor, has a finely tuned antenna for telltale signs of medical intervention. "The most I could say that Naomi would have had might be the slightest amount of Botox," she says.

"Science has come on so much that everything from what you eat to what you put on your skin can have a huge impact over a couple of years. I'm sure she takes anti-oxidants in her food and applies them topically because she has an amazing glow and vitality to her skin."

The biggest factor in her youthful appearance, however, was with Naomi in the womb. "Her skin colour is Fitzpatrick Type 5 (a classification of skin's reaction to UV light). You and I, being pale-skinned and prone to burning, have type 1. The sun is the most ageing environmental factor to the skin and her skin has an inherent sun block. Black skin is also a lot more resilient to other environmental factors. It is slightly thicker than most and can take more wear and tear."

Or, to quote Winfrey and Campbell herself, "Black don't crack."

Those amazing cheekbones are also key, as they act as a type of scaffolding for the face. "Naomi has what we call the 'triangle of youth' where the broadest part of the face is around the eyes and the smallest point is at the chin," says Mulrooney. "If you are blessed with good cheekbones, they are literally like a vector from which the skin will hang, giving it a taut, voluminous look."

Despite being a genetic lottery winner, Campbell has moved to distance herself from her old comments in Playboy about not having to work for her body. "Now I've stopped the parties, stopped trying to burn the candle at both ends," she said.

The Oprah audience was treated to the sight of Naomi working out in her gym. (Surprisingly, it didn't involve vigorous mobile-throwing upper-arm moves.) She uses Pilates-based strength exercises known as gyrotonics. "As we all get older, everything changes and moves, and there are natural ways to exercise," she said. "I think it's important, and I think it's something that can help keep things in place."

Neither is she pigging out on fast food after her daily workouts. She no longer eats gluten and gave up eating meat a year-and-a-half ago. Boyfriend Doronin has also had an influence. "If there is bread on the table, he's like: 'Don't eat bread,'" she told Oprah.

Living in the wacky world of high-fashion, however, has left Campbell with some bogus notions about what's good for her. She also told Oprah that she goes on the infamous Master Cleanse diet three times a year. This is the crash dieting method favoured by the likes of Beyonce and Gwyneth Paltrow. The mainstay of the diet is a concoction made from maple syrup, water, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. "It was not what you would characterise as pretty or easy," Paltrow has said, "It did work, however."

Well, yes, it would do. As the dieter consumes less than 600 calories a day, they are essentially starving themselves. Some celebs use the Master Cleanse for up to 10 days at a time -- Campbell said she once did it for 18 days in a row.

She doesn't have to be so hard on herself. Mulrooney adds: "I'm sure Naomi does all she can to keep age at bay but, really, she was just born lucky."

THE OTHERS...

CLAUDIA SCHIFFER
Schiffer will be 40 next year but is still fit enough to pose nude -- and heavily pregnant -- for the cover of the current German Vogue.
Perhaps it's the slight overbite that helps her retain the slightly childlike air but Schiffer looks like she is still hovering around her early 30s.
Her client list, however, has moved from haute couture to more commercially friendly high street stores like Mango and Accessorise in recent years.

VERONICA MOORE (right)
This Irish model was a favourite muse of Vivienne Westwood in the 1990s and was a huge star in the high-fashion world of Japan for years. Even though she is now 38, her youthful look had her fronting the cutting-edge graduate show from the Limerick College of Art and Design last year.

KATE MOSS
Kate Moss has four years to go before she reaches the big 4-0 but she has already suffered her share of unflattering paparazzi shots. Her rock-chic lifestyle of sex, drugs and late nights has not been without its toll.
"She's also an inveterate smoker," says Dr Katherine Mulrooney, "and it really is the worst thing you can do to your skin after sun damage." Moss was the third-highest paid model in the world last year, raking in €7m -- a chunk of this came from her designer range in TopShop.

HELENA CHRISTENSEN
The former Miss Denmark passed the 40 mark in December 2008 with the high cheekbones inherited from her Peruvian mother still very much intact.
Christensen spent her 30s mostly behind the camera. Now though she is the face -- and, more importantly, bottom -- of a Reebok campaign in which she appears entirely perfect and entirely naked, save for a pair of trainers.

LINDA EVANGELISTA
Canadian beauty Linda uttered the immortal words: "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day." At 45, she's proving somewhat immortal herself.
Three years ago she was still a cover girl for Vogue and two years ago was the face for Prada. At the moment she is a L'Oreal ambassador -- although specifically for their anti-age range.

CHRISTY TURLINGTON
Turlington's face is so perfectly symmetrical that the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art made a mould of it to represent the ideal of beauty. At 41, she remains pretty much flawless; the result, it seems, of a dedication to yoga and hatred of smoking(see her website smokingisugly.com).

CINDY CRAWFORD
Crawford is the eldest of the original supermodels, but if it's any consolation to her, she is May cover girl for Fashion magazine under the headline: Still Sizzling at 44.
Harper's Bazaar announced in March, 'The Sexiest Super is Back', quoting designer Christopher Kane: "I have fond memories of my sisters working out in our living room to her fitness videos. We still have the first one, and her body hasn't changed! Is she a machine?"

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/fabulous-at-40-how-does-naomi-do-it-2190387.html
...AND HERE: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/still-in-vogue-supermodels-then-and-now-2190532.html