Why do questions about age and relationships come up so often in fashion? The industry hires many of its models as teenagers and puts them to work for adults who book and photograph them.
Age-Gap Couples in Research
In a 2008 paper in Psychology of Women Quarterly, Justin Lehmiller and Christopher Agnew reported that women who were more than 10 years older than their male partners described higher relationship satisfaction and commitment than women with partners close to their own age. Lehmiller has suggested that an older female partner may balance the usual power gap in a relationship, while noting that the reason is not known for certain.
Their 2006 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin examined how social disapproval affects commitment in couples whose relationships others treat as unusual. One review of the research reports that age-gap couples perceive more disapproval of their relationship than couples with little or no age gap. In later work, Lehmiller and Agnew found that a stronger sense of being marginalised was linked to lower commitment and predicted which couples had broken up about 7 months later.
Age Differences in Canadian Couples
A Statistics Canada analysis of the 2001 Census, published in Canadian Social Trends in 2003, found that the man was 4 to 6 years older in 20% of unions and 7 to 9 years older in 9%. A gap of 10 or more years with the man older appeared in 7%. Among couples with large gaps, the older-man, younger-woman pattern was the most common. By 2011, 49% of senior couples were within 3 years of each other in age, up from 40% in 1981, and in 46% of senior couples the man was at least 4 years older.
New York’s Fashion Workers Act
New York’s Fashion Workers Act, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, took effect on 19 June 2025. It applies to models who work as employees and models who work as independent contractors, and it places a fiduciary duty on management companies toward the models they represent. The law also applies to clients such as retailers, designers, photographers and advertising agencies.
The law caps management commissions at 20% and limits contracts to 3 years, with no automatic renewal unless the model agrees. Management companies must provide final agreements at least 24 hours before work begins, disclose any financial relationship with a client and itemise the costs a model is expected to repay. It bars discrimination and retaliation against models, and former models must be told if a company keeps receiving royalties from their work. The law also requires a model’s separate written consent before a company creates a computer-generated replica of their image. These rules address the gap in power between models and the companies that represent them, a gap that is wider when the model is a teenager.
Personal Choice in Age-Gap Couples
Outside of work, an age gap between 2 adults is a personal choice.
Some of these couples meet through friends or colleagues. Others look for that kind of relationship on purpose, such as by dating a sugar daddy.
Older Faces in Media Images
A 2019 AARP study of age representation in online images examined 1,116 images, drawn from more than 2.7 million posted in 2018 on news sites and social media by brands and other accounts with at least 1 million followers. It found that adults over 50 appeared in only 15% of images that contained adults. Adults over 50 made up 46% of the American adult population. Negative portrayals were also more common for older adults than for younger ones, and older adults were rarely shown at work.
In 2017, CoverGirl named Maye Musk, then 69, as an ambassador, making her the oldest model to have a contract with the brand. She had signed with the agency IMG the year before, and she later appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue at 74.
Starting Ages in Modelling
The Model Alliance, a non-profit group, was founded in February 2012 by the former model Sara Ziff to win legal protections for fashion models as workers. Among 85 working models who responded to one survey, 30% reported inappropriate touching on the job and 64% said their agency had asked them to lose weight. The group’s first campaign targeted protections for underage models in New York, and reporting at the time noted that the industry’s own age rules were hard to enforce and were sometimes ignored.
Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the resulting law on 21 October 2013. It gave models under 18 the same labour protections as child performers and required that 15% of their earnings be placed in a trust account. Violations could bring fines of up to $3,000 each, and employers had to provide tutors and chaperones.
Vogue’s Age Pledge
In May 2012, editors at all 19 editions of Vogue agreed to a worldwide ban on under-16 models, pledging not to knowingly work with models under 16 or with models who appeared to have an eating disorder. The editors said they would ask agencies not to send underage models and would require casting directors to check identification before shoots. Designers were encouraged to consider the effect of very small sample sizes, on a voluntary basis.
The pledge followed criticism of a 2010 Paris Vogue spread featuring a 10-year-old girl, and the signatories included Anna Wintour of American Vogue and Emmanuelle Alt of Paris Vogue. Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, said that Vogue believes good health is beautiful, and each edition was left to apply the pact locally.
The LVMH and Kering Charter
In September 2017, the luxury groups LVMH and Kering adopted a charter on the well-being of models that barred ultra-thin models from their shows and shoots. It also excluded girls under 16 from adult shoots and shows, and it required a guardian or chaperone at all times for models under 18, along with a ban on serving them alcohol. Female models had to be at least a French size 34, which excluded size 32, the equivalent of a US size 0. Male models had to be at least a size 44. Antoine Arnault of LVMH said some designers had been using size 32 models and that the practice was over.
The charter went beyond a French rule that took effect that May, which required models to present a doctor’s certificate of good health. From October 2017, French law also required commercial photos in which a model’s body had been altered to include the label “photographie retouchée”, with fines of up to 37,500 euros for each breach. Breaking the medical certificate rule could bring fines of up to 75,000 euros and up to 6 months in prison.
The Figure Behind the Debate
Age gaps between consenting adults are a matter of private choice, and most couples in Canada are close in age. The reason the subject keeps returning in fashion is the industry’s own workforce, summed up in a single figure from the Model Alliance survey. More than half of the models who responded, 54.7%, had started work between 13 and 16.