Offbeat fashion ambassadors, from Christopher Walken to Metallica, prove industry is looking beyond age

At age 82, Christopher Walken has lost none of his magnetism. The American actor – by turns enigmatic, droll and inexplicably unsettling – has become the latest face of Saint Laurent. Photographed by Glen Luchford, Walken appears in the brand's menswear campaign wearing a roomy lambskin blouson, hands sunk into trouser pockets, gazing out with an air of practised detachment. It is classic Walken and classic Saint Laurent: moody, lean and loaded with presence.

This latest casting by creative director Anthony Vaccarello is less about shock value and more about a kind of refined rebellion. Walken, after all, has spent decades crafting characters that exist outside the norm: the haunted veteran in The Deer Hunter (1978) and the tap-dancing enigma in Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice video (2000) are two diverse examples. He is nothing if not unpredictable, a quality that aligns with Saint Laurent’s own taste for the off-centre.

Vaccarello, whose campaigns have previously featured Michelle Pfeiffer at 66, Charlotte Rampling at 78, and Keanu Reeves and Lenny Kravitz, both well into their 50s at the time, is clearly uninterested in chasing merely youth. Instead, he opts for figures whose faces tell stories: character actors, enduring musicians and artists with personal mythologies, whose wrinkles and reputations become part of the allure.

This shift is part of a broader recalibration in casting for the fashion industry. In October 2023, Loewe’s campaign starred the late Dame Maggie Smith, then aged 88, seated regally in a vast faux-fur coat. Daniel Craig, ex-James Bond, unshaven in slouchy knitwear, became its menswear muse for autumn/winter 2024.

Meanwhile at Balenciaga, former creative director Demna paired 70-year-old arthouse actress Isabelle Huppert with 24-year-old Thai pop star PP Krit Amnuaydechkorn in a clever dialogue across generations.

Elsewhere, Prada’s eccentric casting history is the stuff of fashion lore: from Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Willem Dafoe walking its 2012 Villains runway, to Jeff Goldblum and Kyle MacLachlan for autumn/winter 2022.

Age aside, in a forward-looking Gen-Z moment, Dolce & Gabbana swapped models for social media royalty Lucky Blue Smith and Cameron Dallas in autumn/winter 2016. The two were dubbed “new princes” by the brand, in a nod to a new digital world. Even the rougher edges of rock have found their way into campaigns: John Varvatos enlisted Iggy Pop in 2006; and Italian menswear house Brioni, under the fleeting tenure of Justin O’Shea, went full throttle by casting Metallica.

For the 50th anniversary of its intrecciato bags, Bottega Veneta wove a tapestry of creative talent, enlisting actresses Lauren Hutton and Julianne Moore, musician Neneh Cherry, and author Zadie Smith into a campaign that felt more like an art installation than an advertisement.

These are not mere celebrity endorsements, either; they are character studies. Each campaign speaks to fashion’s growing desire to frame itself not simply through beauty, but also through narrative, texture and contradiction. Smith may be an award-winning writer and essayist, but through Bottega’s lens, she is also a woman of quiet, intellectual style. Kravitz, now 61, is such an artistic force, he wears leather trousers to the gym.

That’s not to say that enlisting the young and beautiful no longer works. Gucci recruited A$AP Rocky and Ozark actress Julia Garner to front recent fragrance campaigns, while Prada chose pop-sensation Sabrina Carpenter, infiltrating her music videos with subtle product placement. As the face of Prada Beauty, her videos feature a lipstick and even branded candy.

What is increasingly apparent, however, is that influence is no longer linear, but rather fluid and searching for a grounded, yet highbrow authenticity.

Walken's debut for a major fashion house, then, feels less like a pivot and more like a perfectly timed entrance. Saint Laurent isn’t merely dressing an actor, it’s absorbing a mythology, and in Walken’s case, a distinctly American yet deliciously peculiar one. Cool, it turns out, has very little to do with age and everything to do with narrative control. And no one controls his own story like Walken.