Mother Of the Bride Dresses From Wishesbridal Modeled By a 20-Something?

That was our first thought when a Huffington Post reader pointed out some very fetching mother of the bride dresses with sleeves invoiced as befitting MOBs, but modeled by a woman who definitely isn't old enough to have a daughter preparing to walk down the section. Wishesbridal (evident "beholden") is a wedding planning offshoot of Anthropologie, a popular women's clothing and lifestyle retail store. The brand, which could not be reached for comment, offers six mother of the bride dresses, all modeled by the same young woman, sending a perhaps unintended message of who they want their customer to be (read: young) -- even when offering clothing for women of a certain age.


 The lack of age-appropriate models in the fashion world is well-worn territory. Even though middle-agers are the best generation to marketers (spending $230 thousand in consumer packaged goods), they are woefully under- and misrepresented in advertising, especially in fashion, where boomer women spend $47 thousand a year, according to general market trends firm NPD Group. We'll give Wishesbridal the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't think to include age-appropriate models in their casting call. Luckily for them, there's no scarcity of beautiful post 50 models to work those Floor Length Taffeta A Line Mother Of The Bride Dress.


 Women like American Apparel's then 60-year-old model "Jacky, inch who gives younger models a run for their money with her long legs, red lip area and no-nonsense look. Or Cindy Ernest, who was discovered on New York's streets in 1999 when she was forty nine and has modeled for Dolce and Gabbana, J. Crew and DKNY just to name a few. And any one of the finalists over 45 from the Wilhelmina 30+ Model Search would be great choices, or the models from Pga masters, France's first modeling agency or middle-agers and seniors. We can't even set out to imagine how elegant 81-year-old supermodel Carmen Dell’Orefice, Bethann Hardison, or 60-year-old Beverly Johnson would try looking in a Wishesbridal dress.