At 70, the original supermodel’s secret is simple:
she never says no to anything
Jerry Hall is studying the monitor. Our studio team – a very vocal audience, oohing and aah-ing at every pose and flick of her hair – has just watched her come alive in a liquorice-black leather Mugler coat. It’s a strange and slightly dizzying thing to find yourself thinking: is it weird to look at this 70-year-old woman and think she looks sexy? Her verdict on the shot, having sauntered over to the screen, is delivered in that famously deep, syrupy Texan drawl: ‘Horrendous. I look about 100.’ Then she lets out a full-throttle laugh, much to the delight of everyone in the room.
Hall is funny. Disarmingly self-deprecating, and not the slightest bit vain. Oh, she knows how beautiful she is, but that’s just how it’s always been. ‘When I’m at home on my own, I never think about how I look,’ she says. ‘I don’t even look in the mirror, and if I do, by accident, I only think nice things.’ She’s such a non-diva joy to be around – happy, it turns out, so long as she can nip out between shots for a cigarette. She still smokes five to 10 a day, likes a glass of wine at lunch and dinner, takes her coffee strong and black, and hasn’t seen a doctor in years. ‘I don’t ever have tests… I’d rather not know.’ Her relationship with wellness is not quite what you’d expect of a septuagenarian.
This is what makes her such a refreshing choice to be the latest face of Charlotte Tilbury’s new Airbrush Flawless campaign. Tilbury, it turns out, is an old friend. ‘She used to do my make-up with David Bailey years ago,’ Hall tells me. ‘All my girlfriends are like, “Please get me some.” They’re all begging me because this stuff really does hide your wrinkles. I mean, I accept that I have wrinkles. But I want my wrinkles to look as good as they can,’ she hoots. With Hall, what you see is what you get. ‘I don’t want to go do Botox or plastic surgery. I want to look good in the most natural way.’
It’s that same total lack of artifice that will make her so watchable on her other big gig this autumn: The Celebrity Traitors. Given the watertight NDA, her poor agent practically lunges to gag her as I ask about it. But her delight is impossible to hide. ‘I laughed so much. I have not laughed that much in years.’ As for the inevitable scrutiny of being in a cult TV show, she’s unfazed. ‘It’s water off a duck’s back. I’ve lived with [the press] a whole lot.’ Pressed on why she said yes at all, she doesn’t hesitate. ‘I say yes to everything. That’s how I’ve had all this excitement in my life.’
Words Rebecca Lowthorpe
PHOTOGRAPHS JAVIER BIOSCA
STYLING ANNIE HERTIKOVA
Published on 28th September 2026
Hair: NEIL MOODIE AT BRYANT ARTISTS
Make-up: SHAY SUBHAN USING CHARLOTTE TILBURY
Nails: EMMA WELSH AT SB COLLECTIVE
Shoot Producer: ANNA DEWHURST, GABRIELA VELASCO
Photographer’s Assistants: ENRIQUE ESCANDELL,
LUI CARRASCO
Fashion Assistants: LIV BELLAMY, AMBER BACKHOUSE,
JACK BOOTH, CAMILLA THOMPSON
Editor-in-chief: HATTIE BRETT
creative director: carolyn roberts
Deputy editor: hanna woodsidE
Head of Beauty: annie vischer
Style Director: Molly HayloR
OTHER PHOTOS: GETTY & CHARLOTTE TILBURY
Jerry Faye Hall, born July 1956 in Gonzales, Texas, was one of the world’s first supermodels: a six-foot teenager who became the face of two of the biggest-selling perfumes of all time, Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium and Thierry Mugler’s Angel. She was photographed by all the greats, silk-screened by Andy Warhol and immortalised on canvas by Lucian Freud. She was a fixture on the Paris runways and at Studio 54, appeared in Tim Burton’s Batman and later caused a tabloid frenzy on the West End stage, appearing nude in The Graduate at 44. And then, of course, there were the men – first Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music’s coolest of the cool, before 23 years and four children (Lizzy, 42, James, 41, Georgia May, 34, and Gabriel, 28) with Rolling Stones rock royalty Mick Jagger, and, later, a somewhat surprising marriage to – and divorce from – media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Hall’s beginnings could not have been further from all that. She grew up in the working class, rodeo-obsessed Dallas suburb of Mesquite, the daughter of a disciplinarian army man and a Hollywood-obsessed dreamer. ‘My father was General Patton’s staff sergeant on all his campaigns,’ she says. ‘A war hero, he really wanted boys.’ What he got instead were five formidable daughters. If her father gave her grit, her mother gave her glamour. Her ambition for her daughter was huge – hadn’t Grace Kelly gone from actor to princess? She orchestrated Hall’s escape from small-town Texas, convinced by one of her favourite films, To Catch A Thief, that the French Riviera was where a beautiful girl could be discovered. She was right: an agent approached Hall on the beach on her very first day.
Back in Paris, it’s not hard to imagine the storm she created. Dressed in outfits her mother had made by hand, a borrowed Great Dane trailing on a rhinestone leash behind her, Hall was the person everyone wanted to know. She’d wander into La Coupole, the legendary Left Bank brasserie, and simply see who’d buy her lunch: Simone de Beauvoir, Salvador Dalí. ‘It has a power, beauty,’ she says, of those years. ‘I always looked beautiful, all the time. You’d walk down the street, people whistled. I mean, nobody whistles at me now – they’re not allowed to.’ She lets out a big laugh. ‘But I used to enjoy that. I enjoyed the power.’ Her only regret of that time? ‘Dalí wanted me to run nude through his sculpture garden, wrapped only in a white veil.’ She turned him down. ‘My mother made me promise not to do nudes,’ she says, ‘but that would have been amazing.’
Left: Blazer, £3,270, Gucci; bralette, £150, Elissa Poppy; gloves, £621, Paula Rowan; earrings, £2,190, Anabela Chan; bracelets, from £15,950 to £22,220, all Fope.
Right: Dress, £2,990, Akris; shoes, £770, Christian Louboutin; cuffs, £29,900 each, Tiffany & Co; earrings, £425, Susan Caplan.
Read more in the latest issue of Grazia magazine
Is she ever lonely? ‘That’s really strange – what’s wrong with me?’ she jokes. ‘I don’t ever feel lonely at all.’ On being single, she’s matter-of-fact. ‘You don’t have to have a boyfriend or a husband. You can just enjoy being on your own.’
Not that she’s ever really alone – there’s always so many people coming and going. Jagger, for one. ‘I think you should always try to be friends with people you have children with,’ she says. ‘It’s really important, because that’s forever.’ They get along great these days. ‘Mick’s easy to be friends with because I really like him – he’s a lot of fun and a great dad. I like his partner, Mel. They come out quite often to my house, and we have such a good time. Mostly, we play games: backgammon, chess, Scrabble, charades, croquet, pool...’ Christmas is spent together in Mustique, Sundays sometimes at home over lunch.
Does she miss any of it? Not remotely. ‘I’ve got zero ambition – I feel like I did everything. Now it’s just fun. I have peace and I can do whatever I want. I’m living the life of Riley.’ Gardening is her hardcore passion and exercise. ‘I don’t like going to a gym where you’re exercising for no benefit except vanity. If you’re gardening, you’re making something look beautiful.’
For the first time in her life, she also lives alone – in the Georgian pile in Oxfordshire she once shared with Murdoch, before it came to her in their divorce. ‘I had never lived alone my entire life, until three years ago,’ she says. ‘I was quite scared.’ The fear didn’t last. ‘After a few months, I was like, wow, this is easy – and my house, it’s so tidy!’ She adds frankly, ‘I kind of have the perfect life now. I never had such an easy life. I don’t have to look after a husband or their friends. I mean, I guess you could say it was selfish, but I think I deserve it. I worked hard.’
JERRY
FOREVER
I FEEL LIKE I DID EVERYTHING.
NOW IT’S JUST FUN
jerry hall
Jacket, £2,910, and trousers, £1,365, both Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; top, £84, Agent Provocateur; shoes, £695, Manolo Blahnik; earrings, £375, Susan Caplan
Left: Coat, price on request, Mugler; shoes, £1,360, Roger Vivier; ring, £9,920, Fope; tights, £40, Wolford
Right: Top, £260, Pleats Please Issey Miyake; skirt, price on request, Toteme; shoes, £770, Christian Louboutin;
earrings, £395, and necklace, £575, both Susan Caplan; rings, £4170 and £8100, both Bulgari; tights, as before
IF I LOOK IN THE MIRROR,
BY ACCIDENT, I ONLY THINK NICE THINGS
JERRY HALL
Skirt, price on request, vintage Alaïa at Isabel Boner; sunglasses, £255, Gucci; bracelets (Jerry’s right arm), from £11,800 to £22,220, all Fope; blazer, bralette, gloves, earrings and bracelets (left arm)
There are three grandchildren now. Does turning 70 and being a grandmother faze her at all? ‘I feel like I have achieved something. I’ve lived 70 years, and I’ve made a family, and they’ve made family.’ She’s the fun granny – fart-noise toys among her gifts of choice. ‘I don’t believe in nagging them. I think that’s such a bore. I think you teach by example.’
Her approach to parenting was never about rules. ‘I had such a low bar for my children,’ she says. ‘I don’t care if you do good in school, go to college, get a job... you can always live with me. One thing you can’t ever do is be a heroin addict.’ Is that from bitter experience? ‘Keith Richards was a heroin addict – he’s OK now, a miracle.’ She also lost a cousin’s son to an overdose.
Her daughters, Lizzy and Georgia-May, unsurprisingly, inherited more than just their mother’s cheekbones. ‘They’re great girls and they’re really good models,’ she says. ‘I’ve trained them up on glamour and fashion.’ And has she learned anything from them? ‘Not to drink too much wine in front of Georgia!’ she says, laughing.
By the end of our shoot, she’s beaming. ‘I think the shots are wonderful,’ she tells me. I mention how particular she’d been about the lighting. ‘Well,’ she laughs, ‘after 54 years, I should know what looks good.’ It helps, too, that she’s retained the figure of her 20-something self. Her secret? A pair of old Levi’s. ‘When you can’t close them, you need to lay off the pasta for a few days!’ Right by her feet, sticking out of a straw bag, I notice a pair of proper Texan cowboy boots, white with dark red flames down the side, brought along on the off-chance they might be needed. They weren’t. But it’s hard not to clock them and think of a 16-year-old girl who once left home with a suitcase of homemade clothes and absolutely no idea what was coming next.
Rebecca Lowthorpe worked as fashion director for Grazia from 2016 to 2019; she is currently Grazia’s assistant editor, overseeing fashion and beauty content. In her nearly 30 years of working in fashion journalism, she has written for countless publications and there’s nothing she doesn’t know about fashion trends (having seen so many come and go).
Her daughters, Lizzy and Georgia-May, unsurprisingly, inherited more than just their mother’s cheekbones. ‘They’re great girls and they’re really good models,’ she says. ‘I’ve trained them up on glamour and fashion.’ And has she learned anything from them? ‘Not to drink too much wine in front of Georgia!’ she says, laughing.
By the end of our shoot, she’s beaming. ‘I think the shots are wonderful,’ she tells me. I mention how particular she’d been about the lighting. ‘Well,’ she laughs, ‘after 54 years, I should know what looks good.’ It helps, too, that she’s retained the figure of her 20-something self. Her secret? A pair of old Levi’s. ‘When you can’t close them, you need to lay off the pasta for a few days!’ Right by her feet, sticking out of a straw bag, I notice a pair of proper Texan cowboy boots, white with dark red flames down the side, brought along on the off-chance they might be needed. They weren’t. But it’s hard not to clock them and think of a 16-year-old girl who once left home with a suitcase of homemade clothes and absolutely no idea what was coming next.
Rebecca Lowthorpe worked as fashion director for Grazia from 2016 to 2019; she is currently Grazia’s assistant editor, overseeing fashion and beauty content. In her nearly 30 years of working in fashion journalism, she has written for countless publications and there’s nothing she doesn’t know about fashion trends (having seen so many come and go).
(L-R) Jerry on the Kenzo catwalk in Paris, 1980 & Jerry with friend Charlotte Tilbury