Fashion Celebrates All Diversity Except Age—and That Blind Spot Is Costly

This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own.— Susan Dabbar, Editor in Chief

The fashion industry has embraced size and racial diversity, but women over 50 remain invisible. With $15 trillion in spending power, ignoring us isn’t just bias—it’s bad business.

Over a decade ago, I sat across from a seasoned design candidate—60ish, confident, with best sellers and sales data that proved she knew her customer. She should’ve been an asset.

I rejected her anyway.

That decision has haunted me ever since, not because she wasn’t qualified, but because she exposed the blind spot I’d been taught in fashion: Age wasn’t aspirational, so age wasn’t welcome.

Blind Spots and Bias

Just a year prior, I was trying to get back into the industry after taking an eight-year break to raise my kids. Pushing 50, I had little confidence in my ability to re-enter a profession I loved. At a career fair, I handed my résume to the head of HR at a big-box retailer and watched her roll her eyes. The job she dismissed me for was a position with a brand I had created a decade earlier.

As chief design officer, I never had trouble casting models for size or racial diversity. But I never pushed to feature older models on our website. I had a blind spot, and I was both the victim and the enforcer of age bias.

Today, the industry has made great progress with racial diversity, and size diversity is slowly improving. But age diversity? It’s a token effort. I’m always on the lookout for brands that feature older women, but they’re still largely invisible across brand stories and product shots.

Tokenism Isn’t Integration

Zara’s new campaign film, 50 Years, 50 Icons, does this beautifully. Steven Meisel’s film flashes legendary models like Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Paulina Porizkova alongside middle-aged and younger models, set to Donna Summer’s 1977 hit “I Feel Love.”

But when I went to shop the 50th anniversary collection, the product shots featured mostly younger models, and there were no older models in the new fall collection. I wasn’t feeling the love. The women who built the industry are nowhere to be seen where it matters most—in the images that actually sell the clothes. It’s a perfect example of token celebration versus real integration. And it’s a missed opportunity. Forbes puts women 50+ at $15 trillion in spending power and we account for 27 percent of consumer spending. Ignoring us isn’t a tragedy—it’s financial malpractice.

Aspirational at Every Age

But more importantly, older models give women over 50 a more relatable perspective, helping them visualize how clothes will actually look on a mature body, which often has different needs and proportions. I’ve noticed that when a brand has older sales associates in their stores or uses images of models over 50, it gives me so much more confidence in my purchase.

Yet decision-making is still driven by anecdotal bias rather than evidence. A well-respected CEO once assured me—with the confidence only a man can muster—that plus-size women “actually prefer” seeing size six models. Never mind that my clients had been asking for plus-size representation for years.  We didn’t push back. His bias became our company’s policy for 14 years.

That’s how blind spots get baked into fashion: not through data, but through someone’s opinion that’s repeated often enough. Age works the same way. The assumption that women over 50 aren’t aspirational has shaped entire campaigns, not because it’s true, but because no one challenged it.

The Industry’s Comfort Zone

The fashion industry is obsessed with youth. The average fashion leader is 37, and it’s no surprise they don’t see women over 50 as relevant. But models over 50 can be shown alongside younger models without diluting the fashion message, and an industry-wide discomfort with aging drives the lack of real integration. If we let this discomfort decide when women stop being aspirational, we keep ourselves invisible.

Token campaigns aren’t real change. Integration is powerful. Age diversity must be treated like racial and size diversity: Not a stunt, but a standard. With 70 percent of fashion workers being women, it’s on us to push the industry past its own blind spot.

Let’s help create the industry we actually want—and that all women deserve.