International mature model Joseph Solano argues fashion's assumptions about age are more habit than strategy.
Fashion is built on change. It challenges conventions, reshapes ideas of beauty and, at its best, reflects the people who actually wear the clothes.
Over recent years, the industry has broadened its visual language in important ways. We see a greater range of bodies, backgrounds and identities represented on runways and in campaigns. That progress should be recognised.
But one question still deserves more attention: does fashion adequately reflect the age of the consumers buying and wearing it?
Australia is getting older. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that people aged 65 and over accounted for 18 per cent of the population in 2024–25, up from 8.9 per cent in 1975–76. By 2065–66, that share is projected to reach 24 per cent.
Those Australians have not stopped caring about how they look simply because they have passed an arbitrary birthday. They still buy jackets, shoes, eyewear, watches, grooming products and clothes for work, travel, celebrations and everyday life. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics living-cost weights show clothing and footwear remain part of spending patterns for both age-pensioner and self-funded-retiree households.
Yet look across much fashion imagery and the ageing of the customer is far less visible than the ageing of the population.
I see this from an unusual position. I am 63 and work as a model. In recent years I have been fortunate to walk at Australian Fashion Week and Melbourne Fashion Festival, including for designers such as Christian Kimber, MJ Bale and Dom Bagnato.
What has encouraged me most is not simply being given those opportunities. It is how unremarkable age can become once an older model is actually on the runway. The clothes remain the story. A well-cut suit does not suddenly stop working because the man wearing it has silver hair.
That experience has made me wonder whether some of fashion’s assumptions about age are more habitual than intentional.
Fashion has always had strong conventions, but strong conventions are not necessarily permanent ones. Ideas about who can appear in a campaign, who belongs on a runway and what beauty looks like have all evolved. Often, once a convention shifts, the old boundary quickly starts to look less inevitable.
My own experience suggests Australian fashion can be open to that kind of rethinking. We do not need to abandon youth or pretend every campaign should represent every generation. Younger models will always be central to fashion.
The opportunity is addition, not replacement.
For brands whose customers span several decades, showing that range more naturally can make commercial as well as cultural sense. Representation is most convincing when it feels truthful rather than tokenistic. An older man in a campaign should not be there because a box needed ticking. He should be there because men his age buy the product, wear it well and belong in the picture.
This matters particularly in menswear. Men are often encouraged to become more interested in style as they mature: to buy better, understand fit, invest in quality and develop a more individual wardrobe. Yet the imagery selling those products can still imply that style itself has an expiry date.
It does not.
The encouraging thing is that this is not a problem requiring a revolution. It requires curiosity. Cast a wider net. Look beyond the habitual age bracket. Put an older model in the room and judge the result on the same criteria applied to everyone else: presence, suitability, professionalism and whether the clothes work.
Fashion is very good at imagining what comes next.
Perhaps one of its next opportunities is simply to look more closely at who is already here.