Coco Mitchell
Coco Mitchell was a Catholic school teacher
when Eileen Ford, the legendary New York
model agent, scouted her on Fifth Avenue in
- Big editorials soon led to even bigger
career milestones: Mitchell starred alongside
Iman in the 1977 ad campaigns for Polished
Ambers, Revlon’s first cosmetics line for women
of color, before becoming one of the first
black women to appear in the Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. Now 68, Mitchell is back in
demand. “The lines on your face and the graying
of your hair put you in a place of honor,” she
contends of her appeal to young designers such
as CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award winner
Christopher John Rogers and finalist Victor
Barragán, both of whom cast Mitchell in
their spring shows. The exposure caused a
reverberation across the industry, which she
hopes is “not just a trend but the new norm.”
Roxanne Gould
In Roxanne Gould’s long career, which
began at the tender age of three, she
has witnessed an impressive arc—
from the days when models had to style
their own shoots to what she refers
to as “the gray-hair movement.” At 61,
and with rib-grazing silver strands that
have helped earn her recent campaigns
with brands such as Bobbi Brown and
Babor, she is certainly a part of this
continued evolution. “There used to be
so many unspoken rules about aging,”
says Gould, who walked for Jil Sander
exclusively in the ’80s and has shot with
photographers such as Pamela Hanson.
Some of those rules—that women of
a certain age have to have short hair and
“aren’t allowed to be sexy”—just never
sat right with her. Now Gould, a trained
life coach, tries to break down these
societal constraints by empowering
women and girls on social media
to “see the beauty within themselves.”
GOULD: MATTHEW HOLLER; STYLIST, PAMELA JEAN; HAIR AND MAKEUP, ERI VINCENT. MITCHELL: ANDREW MORALES.
