Lauren Hutton, at 64, still blazes like the silver screen siren she was. Just take a look at Mango’s fashion catalogue, writes CHEONG PHIN.

Adapting a youthful look for the matured woman with a shorter hemline in the season's fuller skirt.

Accentuating Hutton's womanly curves with Fall 2008 essential high waist skirt.

SHE’s old enough to be a grandmother. She’s been modelling and acting for nearly 40 years but thanks to popular Spanish fast-fashion chain Mango (better known as MNG here), age is not an issue.

At 64, fashion icon and sex symbol of the 1970s, Lauren Hutton has been signed on to head one of their Autumn/Winter 2008/09 campaigns alongside two younger celebrity models, Penelope Cruz (for its limited edition collection) and twentysomething model/heiress Alice Dellal (for its denim collection).

Sweetly called “We love you, Lauren” and beautifully captured by Catalan photographer Antoni Bernard, the former supermodel radiates in the series of seven stunning pages in the seasonal catalogue for the brand.

She may have worn similar styles in the heyday of her illustrious modelling career, but the updated versions of these looks from Mango appear contemporary and fresh on this veteran model.
She evidently has not lost any of the charisma that has put her on 60 covers of international magazines, including a record 27 times for American Vogue.

Looking incredibly alluring with a body that women her age would die for, and wearing light make-up, Hutton proves that getting older doesn’t mean she has to turn into an unattractive sexagenarian.

Comfortably flashing her recognisable gap-toothed smile and piercing blue eyes, she looks amazing and sexy in a cerulean blue jersey dress with ruched neckline in spite of a modest cover-up with a grey knit cardigan coat.

Equally sexy on her was a revealing scoop-necked blue cardigan worn with the season’s must-have high waist skirt and cinged belt.

The freckles on her skin and the inevitable facial lines seem barely touched-up electronically, thus making it hard to believe that this ex-supermodel is a radiant 64-year-old woman who can still pull off the season’s understated preppy looks in an elegantly insouciant manner.

Unlike many sixtysomething women who would have succumbed to some form of nip and tuck, Hutton is impervious to plastic surgery and has famously said that “our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and what we want to be.”

Born in November 1944, Hutton grew up in Florida and attended the University of Southern Florida for one year before she bravely headed for New York to seek fame and fortune in modelling.

It was the formidable Diana Vreeland, editor in-chief of American Vogue in the ‘60s, who told Hutton that “You have presence. I think you will work with Richard Avedon tomorrow”.

It was the vital break she needed and that first booking with Vogue led to a spiralling modelling career that rewarded Hutton with a groundbreaking US$1 million (RM3.5 million) contract with cosmetic giant Revlon — a first-ever endorsement during that time by a model that lasted for 10 years and effectively laid the foundations of the era of “supermodels” that blossomed in 1980s.

At the same time, she also pursued an acting career that would last till today, starring in Paul Schrader’s sexy 1980 film American Gigolo with Richard Gere and Little Fauss and Big Halsy with Robert Redford, to name a few.

After being fired by Revlon at age 40, a determined Hutton fought back and relaunched her career by creating a make-up line for older women — Lauren Hutton’s Good Stuff.

Then, after personal setbacks and surviving a nasty motorcycle accident at a charitable event, Hutton reinvented herself in the 1990s and continues to live the racy life of model cum actress cum businesswoman till now.

Maturity usually comes with authority and Hutton once again demonstrated it with style and femininity in Mango’s new campaign.

She embraced power-dressing with a womanly appeal in cotton pinstriped men’s shirt worn with plum waistcoat and skinny jeans as well as a silky green blouse layered with olive cardigan and pleated tailored pants which nod nicely to Autumn 2008’s key trend of masculine dressing.

A shorter hemline that sits just above the knee adds youthfulness to the season’s fuller skirt and Hutton looks womanly in a girlish way when she matches her silky printed skirts and plain options with black tights and boots.

The active side of Hutton, the adventure seeker, is adequately captured in a stunning spread that featured the model in a stretched-out yet relaxing pose in Fall fashion’s essential chunky knit dress over grey wooly tights and ankle boots.

Alongside Hutton, Mango truly reveals how to adapt the latest trends to the wardrobe of the mature woman with a youthful, natural and carefree spirit.

In doing so, the brand wishes to remind us that fast-fashion is not just for younger women with certain statistics, but for and within the reach of everyone.

As the famous socialite/actress Lady Diana Cooper once said “First you are young; then you are middle aged; then you are old; then you are wonderful”.

Hutton is more than wonderful at 64, particularly in a world of fashion so obsessed with youth.