Daphne Selfe’s chest: The world’s oldest working model who became the face of ‘granny chic’.

He was born: July 1, 1928

He died: March 28, 2026

Daphne Selfe, the vivacious British model who was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest working female model after returning to work in her 70s, has died in London. He was 97 years old.

His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his daughter Rose Wordsworth.

With her slim 5-foot-7 frame, flowing gray hair and high cheekbones, Selfe continued into her old age the striking looks that captured her modeling career in the 20s.

But after modeling for a few years as a young woman, she got married in the mid-1950s, she said, and now her main focus was raising her children. In the 1960s, when models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton became synonymous with Swinging Sixties London, she felt out of fashion.

For a while, she appeared in advertisements for Kellogg’s cornflakes and modeled for artist Barbara Hepworth. He was also cast in many films, including James Bond films such as Octopussy (1984) and A View to a Kill (1985). As she quipped to Britain’s Daily Express in 2016, however, she was “not a Bond girl”.

But a few months after becoming a widow in 1997, she told The Daily Telegraph in 2018, she received a call asking her to model for the English fashion brand Red or Dead during London Fashion Week. “It was something that had to be done,” he said. “I thought it would stop me from smoking.”

He was met with a standing ovation. Then, with the recommendation of a stylist, she was featured on the cover of British Vogue in old age in 1998. Nick Knight, a famous photographer, took a photo, which led to Selfe being signed later that year by Models 1, a London-based agency that represented Twiggy and Linda Evangelista.

Selfe soon found himself traveling all the way to South Africa for a rewarding job which he described in 2009 as “a welcome addition to my pension”. Over the years, she has been featured in numerous advertisements, including campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and discount retailer TK Maxx, and in the music video for Paul McCartney’s 2013 single Queenie Eye.

He also embraced the world of online youth influencers. Her Instagram account, which has nearly 70,000 followers, flourished at a time when older women were beginning to use social media as a way to challenge traditional ideas about aging.

Selfe became what many British publications, including The Daily Telegraph in 2002, called “the face of ‘granny chic'”. No doubt she would be asked about her skin care routine and diet. His answer: “Nivea, broccoli and an amazing glass of Champagne.”

Daphne Frances Selfe was born on July 1, 1928, in the Muswell Hill district of North London. His father, Francis Selfe, was a former teacher. His mother, Irene (Garraway) Selfe, was an opera singer who worked for the Bank of England. In Selfe’s 2015 memoir, The Way We Were: A Life in Clothes, she wrote that, after giving birth, her mother vowed she would “never win again”.

Growing up in Berkshire, in the South East of England, he was taught to appreciate clothes from an early age. Her mother, whose style was restrained – simple clothes, simple skirt suits and a little powder and rouge, but never lipstick – made all her clothes.

When Daphne was eight, she was sent to a boarding school. As a student at Queen Anne’s School in the Caversham district of Reading, west London, she learned to sew, building on her mother’s lessons in how to do it herself. Eventually, her love of clothes turned into a sales job at Heelas, a department store that is now part of the John Lewis chain.

When he was 21 years old, a spy approached him during his shift at a store and mentioned a contest that would be on the cover of the local publication, The Reading Review. He entered and won. She went on to model for a fashion retailer, selling wool in London and in stores such as Debenhams.

In his later years, Selfe often talked about how the model had changed over the years. He said, photographers and agents used to teach models how to behave on set, he said, and how to pose, presenting their best style to the camera.

“We were taught good manners, how to approach people, how to look for a job, and how to get in and out of a car without showing your knickers,” said British Vogue in 2015.

She married Jim Smith, a TV studio executive, in 1954; He died in 1997. In addition to their daughter Rose, he is survived by one daughter, Claire Selfe; son, Mark; and four grandchildren.

Selfe, whose last modeling job was last year, used her recent approval to start a modeling school, a six-week course that encouraged women of all ages who felt invisible to act with greater confidence.

“They’re old people. Now there are old models,” she said in 2016.

As he told BBC Three Counties Radio in 2017, “I was successful in accepting my age and going grey.

She added: “I’ve had more modeling success since I was 70 than when I was 20.”