How 91-year-old supermodel Carmen Dell'Orefice battled bankruptcy and dodgy husbands to emerge trium

Age is just a number for 91-year-old supermodel . The world’s oldest working supermodel shared the with another beauty this month -- 69-year-old . Carmen posed nude for the photoshoot, looking as comfortable in her skin as ever. 

“Just like working with acclaimed photographer Fadil [Berisha], it’s their perception of what they see in you or me. We are there, a synergy starts to happen, and they bring it out,” the said of why she agreed to go for the shoot, according to . “It’s where their mindset is. The photographer’s mindset is high, not in the gutter. It’s all projection. We’re all silent actresses, and that’s what it’s about.”

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The life of Carmen, who calls the Big Apple her home, has been a rollercoaster ride. From dealing with dishonest spouses to battling bankruptcy, the catwalker has seen it all. Her godfather introduced her to in 1946, when she was just 15 years old, and she signed a modeling contract for $7.50 an hour. She went on to become a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld, who shot her first Vogue cover the same year. 

Carmen and her mother struggled financially as her modeling income was not enough to earn a comfortable living. To save on bus fares, she would roller-skate to her assignments. She was extremely malnourished, so much so that photographers Horst P Horst and Cecil Beaton had to pin back dresses and stuff the curves with tissue.

Carmen was married thrice, including to Bill Myles in the early 1950s. Their relationship was stressed, and Myles eventually exploited her financially by often cashing her cheques into his own bank account. The pair divorced shortly after their first child, Laura, was born. Carmen married photographer Richard Heimann in 1958 after knowing him for six months. She eventually split from Heimann and married architect Richard Kaplan in the mid-1960s. Their marriage lated for nine years, following which she had reportedly been in several relationships. She even got engaged to talk show host David Susskind, but unfortunately, he died in 1987 before they could get married. 

Carmen was forced to auction off her famous modeling photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s through Sotheby's in the 1980s and 1990s after she lost most of her money in the stock market. In 1994, she invested with notorious financial fraud Bernie Madoff with what money she had left, and money from her then boyfriend Norman Levy. Carmen and Levy, along with Madoff and his wife Ruth, were a team for as many as 12 years. They traveled and partied together until Levy died in 2005, aged 93. Madoff was the executor of his will.

At the time of his death, Levy had $244 million in assets, but Madoff's fraudulent investment scheme drew on these funds and lured more than 13,500 people and charities to his Ponzi scheme. Madoff, the mastermind behind the biggest investment fraud in US history, died in 2021 at the age of 82 while serving a 150-year prison sentence. Madoff ran a vast Ponzi scheme in the early 1970s that prosecutors said swindled thousands, many of them elderly, out of their life savings. His victims included tens of thousands of ordinary investors, as well as big names like Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel.

Despite her early successful years, modeling agent Eileen Ford later refused to represent her, and Vogue declined to feature her. Her malnourished body required medical attention, and doctors prescribed shots to start puberty. She retired from modeling after her second marriage in 1959.

However, hardships could not break Carmen's spirit. She returned to modeling in 1978 after her third divorce, and there has been no looking back since. She appeared on the cover of Quarante, a newsstand quarterly publication subtitled 'For the woman of style and substance', in 1984. Carmen modeled for Isaac Mizrahi's clothing line at Target, as well as Cho Cheng and Rolex in the 1990s and 2000s. She regularly featured in their advertising campaigns appearing in Vogue, W and Harper's Bazaar. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts London on July 19, 2011, in recognition of her contribution to the fashion industry. 

Carmen says motherhood and self-love are what keep her young. “Men and women should care for themselves and love themselves. One of the secrets to maintaining beauty is doing what you do for a baby, nurturing and feeding the baby with love,” she said. “That’s what we should do with ourselves: nurture ourselves, love ourselves, and give that kind of energy to ourselves.”

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