
Isabella Rossellini, 60, for Vogue Italia and Rosie Tapner, 16, for Vogue UK
The new Vogue health initiative kicked into high gear this month, an excellent–albeit belated–move on the magazine’s behalf. All 19 editions have hit newsstands, so it’s time to see if Vogue is practicing what they preach.
Each month we’ll be following up on the initiative’s most trackable and divisive tenet: age. Vogue has vowed not to “knowingly” work with models under the age of 16.
Here’s the thing, a model’s age can be pretty fluid. Siri Tollerød once told New York magazine that she was “18 up until she was 20 and a half.” In September 2009, Aymeline Valade told FashionTV that she was 20, and less than two years later American Vogue celebrated her as a model with “life experience” at the age of 26. And earlier this year, Agyness Deyn revealed she is actually 6 years older than she claimed when she first started modeling. None of these are isolated incidents and are quite common in an industry where a 24 year-old is considered by many as “old.” Knowing this, we throw ourselves on the mercy of the internet. Ages provided by agencies and other sources may not always be 100% accurate, but we’ll work with what we’ve got.
So did Vogue pass the age requirement this month?

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