Maggie Rising! The ’90s Supermodel Returns to Modeling as a Mother

In the late nineties, Maggie Rizer was a recurring presence in the pages of Vogue. With her arresting good looks and sunny disposition, Rizer stood out as a new kind of all-American model: edgy enough to appeal to photographers like Steven Meisel and Craig McDean, but sweet enough to front campaigns for wholesome standards like Clinique, which made her the face of its ubiquitous, decade-defining fragrance Happy. For close to a decade, Rizer was a fashion fixture—until she stepped away from the industry to focus on herself and her family. In the years since, Rizer has settled down with businessman Alex Mehran, become a mother three times over, and recently returned to modeling. With back-to-back appearances in the August and September issues of Vogue, it’s clear that Rizer is once again at the top of her game. We caught up with the supermodel to talk motherhood as a model, and how she’s adjusting to the new social media–heavy industry.

Maggie Rizer

Photo: Gianni Pucci / Indigitalimages.com

You wrote a wonderful piece last September about what it was like to come back to modeling after a decade. How has it felt to return to the pages of Vogue in the September issue?

Modeling and fashion are some of the things that have made me happiest in the world. I grew up in fashion, and while everyone else my age was having the college experience, I was learning about why Alexander McQueen was so amazing and learning about what inspires Karl Lagerfeld. It’s hard to relate to, but it’s my reality and I’ve loved it. Today as a mom of three, returning to Vogue is awesome and makes me incredibly happy. The only difference between today and the beginning of my career is I have a lot more going for me than just being a fashion model. It doesn’t mean I’m not incredibly lucky and fortunate to be a model, it just means I’m even that much more fortunate to be blessed as a mom—a job I could never compare to another.

How has being a mother impacted your career?

People love to say that becoming a mom won’t change your life, but, really, it changes you in every way imaginable, and that includes your fashion sense—in a major way. Absolutely everything I wear (within a 50-degree radius of my children) is pooped or puked on, and I’m totally okay with that. Today my fashion at home is casual (as cool as I can be, since I get dressed basically in my sleep), and when I go out, I get a chance to dress in fabrics other than Sunbrella. Modeling is more limited for me these days because my number one priority is my family, but I am very fortunate to be able to still do it once in a while.

What is it like for you seeing trends from the nineties/aughts showing up again on the runways?

Nineties fashion is the best for me, so to see it back is amazing! There is nothing better than big combat boots, grunge, dirty cool hair, and a good rock vibe. You don’t have to push this trend on me.

How do you find the current era’s focus on social media and self-promotion—has it been an adjustment dealing with that side of the business?

Social media and reality TV have wound their way into fashion in a way I assumed was unimaginable. It’s fascinating that it’s been so successful, and it’s amazing that it has given girls such strong reins on their careers. Social media is giving power back to models, making them that much more valuable and popular, as it should be! Self-promotion was initially a little hard for me to understand, but I now understand the importance of it, not only to models but also to brands and magazines. I think it’s quite amazing that models now have this amazing extra power. Especially after so many actresses taking over a big percentage of editorials, ads, and covers—I think it’s phenomenal that models have this extra bit of control over their careers.

After two decades, what keeps you excited about the job?

I love fashion. I truly enjoy watching designers come back season after season with fresh inspiration. I love watching the world inspire fashion and love seeing it play out in the streets. It’s amazing to me to watch fashion go from a sketch to the runway to the sidewalk. I love that everyone can be in fashion. You can spend $10,000 or $10 and be in fashion. In all of the transformations it makes, fashion is incredible.

This season we’ve seen an influx of incredible redheads on the runway. As one of the originals, how do you feel about that?

Not that I’m biased, but redheads are and always have been a special beauty like no other in fashion. Natalie [Westling], Rianne [Van Rompaey], and Madison [Stubbington] are not only stunning redheads but are all genuine and sweet with great personalities. It’s a true honor to work with these girls [in the September issue]. The more redheads, the better!

What can we expect from you as you enter into this new phase of your career?

My number one focus is my family, which means lots of diaper changes, swim lessons, and soccer games in my future! There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than that. I am very humbled to be in this amazing position I am in, to be able to choose when to work and to have such incredible jobs to choose from. It’s a unique position that I don’t take for granted. I would also love to open a shop near our home at some point. It would feature some of my favorite designers and items—like Matthew Williamson, Yohji [Yamamoto], Awaveawake, Rick Owens, Dean Harris, Diptyque candles, Assouline books, special finds from traveling, et cetera. Saying all that, the diaper changes are the only thing I’m 100 percent certain about.

Vanessa Beecroft’s Latest Fashion Foray Combines Angelic Models With Valentino Couture

Vogue Ukraine's Art Issue

Photo: Courtesy Vogue Ukraine

Throughout her oeuvre, artist Vanessa Beecroft has explored society’s view of the female form in her controversial and immersive performance art. On occasion, she focuses her work on fashion, joining forces with designers—most notably Kanye West for his Fall 2015 presentation with Adidas Originals—and publications for one-of-a-kind moments. Her latest fashion project is an expansive portfolio for Vogue Ukraine’s second annual Art Issue. Working hand in hand with fashion editor and project curator Olga Yanul, Beecroft merged marble, semi-nude models, and Valentino Couture into one sumptuous fashion story. Speaking to Style.com about the project, Beecroft and Yanul share how this unique portfolio came to be.

How did this collaboration come about?

OLGA YANUL: Once a year Vogue Ukraine does its special Art Issue. The one we made with Vanessa is the second one we have done so far—the first one we did was in collaboration with Marina Abramovic. We’re interested in showcasing the most prominent artists in the world and their correspondence with fashion. It’s a great opportunity to show our readers the best creative minds shaping the modern art world. The fashion part makes the art objects a little bit more narrative,  understandable, and easier to accept. Moreover, it helps to create new meanings. I guess that’s one of the most exciting things in fashion.

Why did you choose to highlight the marble works? 

VANESSA BEECROFT: It began in 2010 when I realized my first marble sculpture, a head in alabaster, in Carrara, Italy. The marble sculptures progressively grew into a sculpture group…[made of] marble of many colors and origin: pink from Portugal, black from Belgium, blue from Macaubas, pink from Francia, green from the Alps, etc. The project became very complicated due to my distance from Carrara, the place where the sculptures are made, since others carve the stone for me. It became an agony. This year, when the Venice Biennale invited me to participate in the Italian Pavilion, giving me a cubical space, I decided to throw in all the marble sculptures I have worked on during the past years to create a marble performance made of fragments. This was the beginning of the creation of this room.

What was the feeling you wanted to convey with these images?

OY: We were interested in Vanessa’s very intimate touch on female beauty and existence. In the way, alive and preserved in stone, they communicate with and fulfill each other.

VB: These images are a consolidation of real women present in my work and their equivalent in marble. They are all present in one room, one evoking the other. The live ones informing the marble ones, and vice versa. I wanted to convey a sense of eternity of life and death co-existing.

How did you go about choosing the clothing that would be used in the images?

VB: I like Valentino Couture; I consider it like the marble in the sense of its purity. I chose the pieces based on minimalism, and sometimes the color or texture that was an equivalent to me of the marble’s veins and texture.

OY: The idea Vanessa was aiming to express was the main starting point. The girls had to look like her marble statues, but still alive, ephemeral, and divine. Valentino dresses—simple, sophisticated, transparent, and monochrome—were a perfect way to embody this idea. Plus, Vanessa introduced us to a very interesting designer from Rome, Cristina Bomba. She made some special pieces: veils, masks, and transparent dresses. Vanessa often works with naked bodies, but as soon as we started to discuss the project, it was clear we needed a fashion message.

How is doing a project for fashion different from a piece you would do for your personal work?

VB: In this case, for example, it required the use of wardrobe, something I do not need in my work to such an extent. Fashion has specifics, art doesn’t. Art is free from constrictions with the market in its making, fashion is not.

What were you looking for when it came time to select the models?

VB: Diaphanous, androgynous women who looked like saints or like Magdalenas.

Glad to be grey? What life is like for older male models

Nico, 36

Nico D’Ambrosio. Photograph: ©Louise Hawkins

The Grey Model Agency isn’t explicitly an agency for grey models but if you are, it helps. It was launched last week by Rebecca Valentine, a former photographic agent, with a view to scouting, casting and signing models aged 35 upwards. Valentine came to the idea after realising a distinct “lack of supply” of older models alongside a shift of demographic in the beauty industry. “In the modelling world, once you hit 24 you’re can be considered past it,” she says. “But the truth is, people want to see older models, in campaigns especially. For a middle-aged woman, looking at an image of a woman half her age wearing the dress she wants isn’t going to inspire her, is it?”

The idea, says Valentine, is to focus on casting older models in younger roles; grey-haired women in tracksuits, that sort of thing. Basic retouching is considered a necessity in photography, so that will happen, but extensive use of Photoshop won’t (“otherwise, what’s the point of casting an older model?”). A handful of the people on the agency’s books are former models, answering that difficult question about what happens when models hit their mid-20s, but the rest are “elegant and eccentric” civilians. Dancers with dodgy hips. Former PRs. Masseuses.

In the last few years, fashion has cottoned on to the grey pound by fostering more diversity in fashion campaigns. A hatful of older campaign stars including Joan Didion, Cher and Joni Mitchell are valiantly subverting media perceptions of how we see age. Now, older models front Dove campaigns. If they’re Cher, they land the cover of Love magazine, and if they’re Veruschka, they walk on Giles Deacon’s catwalk. It figures that the modelling world is following suit; older shoppers are no longer placed at the weak end of the market, so it makes sense to ship in models who speak directly to the buyer, women who celebrate age.

But what of the men? This week, George Clooney revealed that he thinks men age better if they accept it gracefully rather than fight it; if they welcome the wrinkles as they roll in. But while Hollywood has long been accepting of older men (not so much the women) it hasn’t always been the case in fashion. Here, three “older” male models explain what it’s like modelling when you’re considered “past it” and the terror of seeing a grey beard in the mirror.

“Mid-30s are tricky for a man. I don’t know if I look my age. What does a 35-year-old look like? But obviously, while we’re still young, we fall into society’s perception of what is old now. I think that 40 is the new 30 but at my age, you’re no longer seen as a young man, even if you feel like one. I still do, but according to the mainstream, I am too old to model. But the thing is: say, you’re modelling a fashion brand, the guys my age are the ones with the money so how are they meant to identify with a model who is a teenager and could be a boy or a girl, looks-wise? We, the mid-30s, are where it’s at.

“I never really thought about modelling as a full-on career; my background is more music and art, that sort of thing. And, of course, I look in the mirror and think: ‘Oh God, I’m going grey’, but to be honest, I’ve had silver streaks since I was a teenager so I’ve sort of found peace with it. I think it’s widely known that men age better than women but I think [the perception] of ageing is changing. And I think using older models will help.

“I have a beard but I didn’t consciously grow it for modelling, to look the part. I spent many years on the road and I just got lazy and didn’t cut it. It comes and goes. I think it’s my lifestyle that makes me ‘seem’ younger than I am, it hasn’t been conventional or mainstream and that probably makes a difference. But I still find it weird when I get attention from younger girls.”

                                            Matthew Morris, 45

Matthew Morris. Photograph: ©Gemma Reynolds

“I’m a performer and a dancer, among other things, but yes, I suppose modelling is something I do. It started when I was scouted in Brighton by an independent label. I hadn’t thought about it before, I was more focused on my other jobs, but I enjoyed it so I thought I’d apply to the agency. To be honest, now I’m 45, it feels like the right time.

“I recently landed the Esprit AW campaign. I’m the oldest model in the group, but it’s the first time I’ve been able to do more than whisper ‘I’m a model’. I sort of can’t believe it, really. I suppose that modelling at 45 defies convention but that’s not just the case for this industry. I mean, at 45, I am ‘too old’ to be a dancer. For example, it takes longer to repair if you get injured. But that said, it does feel very rewarding to be considered a model at this age and to get that campaign.

“I don’t think about ageing on a day-to-day basis. I mean, sure, sometimes I look in the mirror and think: ‘Look at my beard, look how grey it is’, or think the hair on top is thinning. But ultimately you have to feel your age, you know, to let it bother you. I don’t think about it. I suppose it’s considered easier to age if you’re a man, because people use words like ‘distinguished’ when they talk about older men. But my aim is to work at an agency which makes it OK to be older, regardless of gender. I hope that what I do empowers men and women my age.”

                                            Antony Fitzgerald, 50

Antony Fitzgerald. Photograph: ©Tom Watkins

“I think that society does view age in a different way now. Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t see tattoos or albino models, or even gappy teeth, so society must have changed its attitude towards beauty. The idea of what is good looking is very different, and I hope to help change perceptions. I don’t mean I think I’m good looking at all, and I find the fact that I have been signed surprising, but I don’t see myself as the classic black model, if that makes sense. Or at least what’s considered classic. I am skinny, black and old; I look like ‘a father’. I think black male models are stereotyped as being buff or ripped, not tall men who like to dance, like me.

“I’ve done all sorts, some PR and marketing, but I’ve always been interested in fashion, I just didn’t think that I’d fit in. I’m going for a more elegant look, you know, incorporating dancing into my shoots. People would probably assume I’m at home sipping Ovaltine in front of Corrie. But I still go to clubs and I still see the same people there and we’re all still dancing, which must say something about society, perceptions and the reality of what it’s like to get older.”