Having stared down Vogue readers from 40 covers, veteran supermodel Lauren Hutton’s opinion of beauty is surprisingly more homespun than high fashion.
“I like looking good because people are nicer to you and then you’re nicer to them,” Hutton, 79, says. “I just need to remind myself to be nicer to myself.”
Supermodel Lauren Hutton on the Valentino runway in Paris, 2019.Credit: Getty
Surely, the woman who inspired some of photographic master Richard Avedon’s best work and broke modelling’s reflective glass ceiling in 1973, by signing a $250,000 a year Revlon contract for 20 days’ work, understands the power of high cheekbones, an unflinching stare and athletic frame.
“Well I spent enormous amounts of time in the sun growing up, so some days I wake up looking like the bottom of a foot.”
“I had a pretty good-looking dad and a pretty good-looking mother, so I was lucky.”
Hutton’s shoot-from-the-hip views on beauty – this is the women who ditched covering the gap in her teeth with mortician’s wax and kept making money – have scored her a return ticket to Australia as a guest of David Jones, for the department store’s Beauty Awards in Sydney on July 19.
Just don’t expect Hutton to applaud any anti-ageing products, as she is a forthright exponent of age positivity.
“I think this anti-ageing business was some desperate ploy by advertising people and it took off like mad. What is ageing for? It’s for growing up and getting wise, especially to ourselves.”
When did she decide that being old could be beautiful?
“Well I was probably 10 years old.”
Born in South Carolina, raised in Florida, Hutton landed in New York in the mid-sixties after completing an Arts degree and stint as a Playboy bunny. Modelling was just a way to make money and fund her wanderlust.
Cover girl. Lauren Hutton has appeared on 40 covers of ‘Vogue’ worldwide and a record 27 covers of US ‘Vogue’.
“New York was where the money was in the sixties and seventies and the city was filled with tall Germans. I was short but I could talk tall.”
“I nosed my way into the industry, but I would always take two months off to travel. I never went to parties. I went to bed early. I was ready to work. The next day I would be on a plane.”
Hutton travelled extensively through Africa during her modelling years, casting her net wider as she explored acting with roles in American Gigolo opposite Richard Gere, Once Bitten and Zorro, The Gay Blade.
US supermodel Lauren Hutton is returning to Australia for the David Jones Beauty Awards in July.
“Travelling you see different kinds of beauty. There would be round women, plump women and curvy women that made you want to jam down 10 cannelloni. Now we are finally seeing these women in the industry. There are women of all sizes, colour and shapes.”
“There will be even more because that’s the world.”
This is Hutton’s second stint working for David Jones, having appeared in campaigns from 1997 until the arrival of store ambassador Megan Gale in 2001. She’s a fan of Australians’ attitude and is making room for diving gear in her luggage.
“My best memory of my time with David Jones was out sailing in Queensland, jumping off the boat and seeing my first shark,” she says. “It circled me, bumped me and I managed to wave a rock at it before someone came along and I was out of there.”
“Now that was a beautiful moment.”
Along with diving, Hutton’s beauty routine consists of reading and “trying not to yell at the television”.
“I feel most beautiful when I wake up next to my sweetie,” she says, referring to a companion she keeps private. “Being young is all about having a good time. Getting old is about being your wisest self.”
As for modelling, at 79, what does she get out of it?
“I get tremendous amounts of money.”
It sounds like Hutton is already wise enough.
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