`I'll die with my heels on'

How wonderful to see Marks & Spencer using American Carmen Dell'Orefice for the company's autumn/winter fashion shoot. One of the oldest models in the business, Dell'Orefice started her career at the age of 14 in 1945 with a seven-page spread in Vogue, after which she signed a contract with Conde Nast working for $7.50 an hour. Her second shoot was with Cecil Beaton. In Michael Gross's 1995 book Model, she explained that until noticed by a photographer on the street in New York, "I'd always been the ugly duckling of my crowd. I was the tallest, the skinniest, and I had braces on my teeth.

The boys couldn't stand me." All that changed once she started to model, making the cover of Vogue for the first time. Although never as successful as some of her contemporaries such as Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, Lisa Fonssagrives and Dovima, she has certainly managed to surpass them all in terms of career longevity. Although there have been fallow periods, she has continued to work for more than half a century, only taking to the catwalk on a regular basis during the present decade. Now aged 68, Carmen Dell'Orefice appeared last year in David Bailey's television series Models Close-Up. Both there and in the accompanying book, she unashamedly advocates plastic surgery, remarking "I'd say if a woman can afford it, you're not going to become a different person, but it makes you feel good". Elsewhere in the same programme she commented, "I want to redesign myself day in day out. We're ageing, but that doesn't mean we have to become ugly. We're all going to die, but I want to die with my high heels on." Regretfully, for this shoot, Marks & Spencer has only given her flat shoes to wear.