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Glamour Grows Up: German Models Come of Age
In a youth-obsessed world with a seemingly endless supply of lanky supermodels such as German-born Heidi Klum, few models over 30 prowl catwalks or grace the covers of magazines. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. In Germany and the United States, mature models are increasingly in demand. With both American baby boomers and their European counterparts set to retire en masse over the next few years, senior models are gradually coming of age. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), for instance, launches searches for the “Faces of 50+” in a “real people model search” for its magazine, which has the highest circulation of any magazine in the world. In Germany, as the population ages, advertisers are increasingly using older models to tap into the purchasing power of the “silver generation”. “The trend towards senior models is just starting. Over the next 10 to 20 years, it’s only going to grow. It’s good business,” Nicola Siegel, owner of Senior Models Berlin, told German national broadcaster Deutsche Welle a year after she first opened the agency in 2003. About 70 percent of Siegel’s models are actors, because in the senior model business clients want faces with character, not blank canvases with perfect features. Some 20 percent are professional models and another 10 percent are what she calls “new faces” – her office receive around 40 applications a day from aspiring senior models. So will 50- to 80-year-old models will soon start replacing their 20-something counterparts on billboards and magazine covers? “It’s going to happen, but it’s going to take quite a while,” said Ulf Heuer of Senioragency, a network of agencies dedicated to the 50plus market. “One of the reasons is that, on average, people working in advertising agencies are much younger, so they’re not in a position to think and feel the way older people do.” The only problem, said Siegel, is that looks can be deceiving: “Ten or 15 years ago, people looked their age, but now, that’s changed. That’s one of my main problems with clients. I send them a 65-year-old model, and they call me up saying she looks too young.” This is a problem many younger models would surely like to have …
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