Caryn Franklin, co-founder of All Walks Beyond the Catwalk and former fashion editor and co-editor of i-D Magazine, has recently talked about real beauty being good for business in her latest Huffington Post blog.

Franklin noted that research released this month by Judge Business School reveals that when fashion imagery features a range of women in size and age, “it’s not only considerate practice, and good for female self esteem… IT’S GOOD FOR BUSINESS”.

Ben Barry, Phd Graduate of the Judge Business School, Cambridge University, has just finished his study of consumer behaviour – in which he researched 3000 women in Canada, the US, and the UK – and found that over 90% of women between 40-65 years old had “increased purchase intentions for a fashion product when the advertisement featured models reflecting their age and size”.

Barry added: “Women over 40 years old possess more overall spending power than any other age group and they spend more on women’s apparel than younger market segments. Moreover, research demonstrates that aging does not reduce fashion interest among individuals.”

So there you have it – women over 40 do not respond to advertising aimed at young women, but instead respond strongly to fashion imagery directly aimed at them. This may seem obvious to some – so why then do some companies continue to alienate the majority of their target market by not only using young, thin models, but by also using airbrushing and post production techniques that make women feel inadequate?

Franklin commented: “In this age obsessing, wrinkle-fearing industry, where bodies more than two decades old are considered ill-suited to stalk the runways or adorn the ad campaigns or fashion editorials, a little hard nosed number crunching comes to the rescue!

“Business and corporate behaviour, long considered the enemy of creativity, will lead the change and all because the survey says ‘yes’! Older women and of course curvier women are good for increased quarterly returns.”

While we’ve witnessed many designers and companies, such as Ultimo, New Look and Dove, use ‘real’ models of all shapes, sizes, ages and ethnicities, we at Models Direct hope that more will follow suit and Barry’s research findings will make a positive impact on the modelling scene.