The World’s Longest Working Supermodel

Career longevity in any field is now a rarity but modeling? Pfft. They age in dog years. Still, Carmen Dell’Orefice actually holds a world record for the longest stretch of time in continual work as a model. A Gemini, she’s been working since the age of 14 – “I’d roller-skate to shoots, I treated them like playdates,” she said – and turned 90 in 2021.

Did she ever think about retirement? Well, yes, actually. But when her life savings were scooped up and dematerialized by the Ponzi con-merchant Bernie Madoff, she quickly surmised that she’d need to keep primping and posing. He was, she thought, a good friend – not to mention a trusted advisor. It was early 2009, she was 77, and transit Pluto was conjunct her Moon – a security-quaking astro-passage at any time.

Madoff Fuqed Her Over When Pluto Was Conjunct Her Moon

Her rising sign is indeterminate as her birth time is not public, but my guess is Pisces. Why? Well, she has a Capricorn Moon, which reflects her beautiful bone structure and decades of ongoing self-discipline. Her Gemini Sun is auto-set to cool-hunt: never mind if you were a teenage acquaintance of Salvador Dali, she will continually adapt and be drawn to breaking trends.

But her insistence that a veterinary product called Bag Balm is her skincare secret makes me think she’s pulling a Pisces Rising Low Maintenance ruse. There is absolutely no way a woman who looks like this, whose face is literally her fortune and survival weapon, would moisturize with petroleum jelly.

Her languid hauteur and lanky frame mean she is often cast as the representative of a WASP aristocracy, but her upbringing was hell: poverty, violence, an abusive mother and exploitative father, shuffling between foster homes and little education from the second it became apparent that her looks had major earning potential.

Gemini Sun – Capricorn Moon is the ultimate ageless-aging combo

Dell’Orefice is a self-educated, self-created phenom – there was no nurturing, never a buffer zone. In the post-war world of boob-centric, oestrogenic icons like Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, model agencies told her to go away and take hormone shots.

“Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds, I can’t wait…”

Holly Golightly – Breakfast At Tiffanys

Her Uranus is conjunct the Moon’s North Node in Aries – these people are nearly always bootstrapping their life and times into gear. They’re self-made by default, and the good news is that the process generates unbelievable resilience. Her signature scent? Bandit.

While Gemini Sun/Capricorn Moon is a fabulous combo for ageless aging and youthful-ish fashion sense regardless of chronological age, she also has the big-time blessing of Mars in Leo. Photogenic as fuq, this is a performance Mars – more comfortable on stage or in the spotlight than in bed secluded. Additionally, she is also a Mercury + Venus in Taurus woman – the perfect combo for fashion eloquence.

She never talks about politics or feminism – at least not in public – but insists magazines cite her real age. “Why limit your life with self-imposed ageist thinking that says ‘oh, I can’t do that…I’m too old’?”