Put more grey hair on runways, you cowards

For context, I’m 29. That’s a sticky age when it comes to self-image and ageing. Despite having the rigorous skin-care/hair-care regimen and a plethora of cosmetic treatments any beauty editor has access to, I can’t control the fact that my face is changing and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. Or the fact that my dark hair is likely going to be streaked with white sooner rather than later. Despite what internet youths will tell me, I’m still very young. But teetering on the edge of 30 makes you think about ageing in a new way, and for me, that applies especially to the ways I see women older than me represented (or not represented) in different industries.

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Getty Images

When you no longer identify with the images of plump cheeks, textureless foreheads, and smooth undereyes that seem to be in every advertising campaign, on every popular album cover, and, of course, on every runway, you realise just how infrequently you see women over 40 represented in media in a way that values their aesthetics, not just their “wisdom.” Women of all ages deserve to be respected for their characteristics beyond the physical — but society often approaches younger women with unabashed, leering desire. Meanwhile, older women are met with either a back-handed sense of pity about their loss of beauty or an ass-kissing attitude that suggests their cumulation of life experiences compensates for their lack of youthful appearance.

What Batsheva said at their show last night is that older women are worthy as they exist. They’re beautiful. They’re fashionable. They’re cool! They just are.

That in and of itself seems to be Hay’s motivation for casting the show this way. “Since turning 40, I have felt a real shift in my place in the fashion world, which is so obsessed with youth, as well as in the way I like to dress,” she tells Allure. “I wanted to create an environment on my runway where ageing and grey hair were out on display and where that was fun and cool and aspirational.”

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Getty Images

Though the emotional impact of the grey hair itself wasn’t totally intentional, it was certainly a pleasant surprise. “When the models arrived, we were all surprised at how amazing it felt to see so much grey hair — we all remarked on it,” Hay recalls. “We told the hair team to amp up each woman’s hair as it was. It was truly the most fun backstage I have ever had.”

Rather than saying, “Let’s make a statement about diversity to sell clothes,” it seems Batsheva Hay simply wanted to make her runway feel like an accurate reflection of her own life and personality. That’s why it doesn’t come off as ungenuine or like a marketing ploy, as hyper-diverse runway shows sometimes can. (It did successfully sell the brand to me, though; I went poking through Batsheva’s website right after seeing this show.)

It all begs the question: Why is the fashion industry so afraid of letting naturally grey hair or faces with fine lines shine on runways? Why does an instance of an older cast of runway models have to be a rare one? As Hay says, “Fashion doesn’t have to be mean and exclusionary.” Clearly, when it’s not, the results speak for themselves.

This feature was originally published on Allure.