Sweet Carolyn

At 45, Ms Murphy remains an unstoppable force. Grace O’Neill gets acquainted with one of the last remaining full-time supermodels

Conventional (albeit sexist) wisdom dictates that men get better with age, while women — to put it bluntly — don’t. But anyone who subscribes to this theory ought to google ‘Carolyn Murphy 2019’. The American supermodel looks more luminous and delicately beautiful at 45 than she did at 21. It’s a feat of twisted logic that has seen her keep her place as one of the most in-demand models in the industry for almost three decades. Legendary photographer Arthur Elgort explained it succinctly to The Times of London: “Christy and Carolyn get older, they get better.” When Murphy speaks to BAZAAR from Los Angeles, where she is shooting, I ask her how she reacted when she read that quote.

“I have goosebumps hearing that,” she says with astonishment. “For me to be put in a sentence with Christy Turlington is insane. For him to say that, of all people — I mean, I need to sit down.” What could sound like faux modesty or even a lack of awareness of her own legacy, coming from the chatty, optimistic, genuinely lovely Murphy is actually endearing. Turlington, it turns out, is her lifelong hero. “The only person I looked up to, and who mentored me, both from a distance and personally, was Christy,” she says.