Post contributed by Brandee Newkirk, Processing Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.
For my first-ever processing project as an intern at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, I was given the opportunity to process the papers of Anne W. Pickford, known professionally as Kaylan Pickford. Anne Pickford was a model between the 1970s and the 2000s. However, unlike traditional models who typically begin their careers in their late teens or early twenties, Pickford, with the help of her friend J. Frederick Smith, started her career in her 40s after two marriages and the birth of two children.
To better understand the significance of Anne Pickford’s presence in the modeling industry, it is helpful to understand the changes the fashion industry made by the early 1980s. Through the commercial success of 1960s models like Twiggy and Donyale Luna, by the late 1970s the fashion industry saw the potential in establishing new relationships between the models and the public audience. This new preoccupation with how models engaged with the audience created the rise of the “Supermodel” and saw the deliberate hiring of models at younger and younger ages.
For Anne Pickford, who began her career in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, the industry’s interest in cultivating youth as fashion ambassadors made it difficult for her to enter the industry at a later age. In an interview with the New York Times, Pickford described the beginning of her career as difficult and how she had to break through, stating, “I earned $3,000 the first year and $3,000 the second year. Then I sort of caught on.” This financial difficulty is reflected in the Hartman Center’s collection of Pickford’s papers, as Pickford kept detailed records of her checkbooks and pay stubs.
This early difficulty led Pickford, throughout her career, to dedicate herself to celebrating her age, opting not to dye her grey hair or undergo cosmetic surgery. When considering the fashion industry at the time, Pickford had good reason to assume an ageist bias. Models such as Brook Shields, Farida Khelfa, and Paulina Porizkova all began their careers in their mid-to-late teens, and larger fashion brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Jean Paul Gaultier were all known for hiring only teen to twenty-year-old models. This industry standard trickled down to more commercial advertising.
Inside the Anne “Kaylan” Pickford papers, researchers will see Anne Pickford’s interest in challenging the commercialization of older women. Featured in the collection are a series of advertising images that showcase Kaylan Pickford using beauty cosmetics or luxury goods. Anne Pickford wanted older women to be celebrated for their beauty in aging, making a conscious effort to turn away commercial pharmaceutical jobs for more beauty-based photoshoots. The collection also includes the writings of Anne Pickford. Two of her books, Always a Woman (1982), and Always Beautiful (1985), were written to inspire “mid-life” women and provide helpful tips on maintaining beauty without resorting to surgery.
Anne “Kaylan” Pickford’s collection is a celebration of what it means to get older. Anne Pickford dedicated her career to letting women know that just because they have lived a successful life, it does not mean that their beauty has faded.
