The Daily Mail ran a story over the weekend about 45-year-old Elle MacPherson’s recent appearance at an event for Jaguar in London. The article was called “Is that cellulite on Elle Macpherson’s thighs? Even ‘The Body’ can’t escape the ageing process at Jaguar launch”. They featured these photos – only they had enlarged one of them to show Elle’s “cellulite”. If you look really, really closely at one of the photos, it seems Elle has a little loose skin above her knee, and she was photographed at a bad angle. If you go to read the article, you’ll find several plastic surgeons who claim that it’s not really cellulite, but something called “creping”:

So extraordinary and enviable is her physique, that Elle Macpherson is known as The Body. Yet at the grand old age of 45, positively ancient in supermodel terms, she appears to be showing the first signs of wear and tear.

Photographed as she attended a glamorous party to launch a new Jaguar car at the Saatchi Gallery in West London, Miss Macpherson wore a short gold dress which showed off her legs fabulously.

On closer inspection, the knee and thigh on the model’s right leg appear to be suffering from the dreaded appearance of sagging loose skin. The condition, often called ‘creping’ by cosmetic surgeons, is the result of nothing more than the aging of the skin making it less firm and taut.

The effect is particularly prevalent on people who have little fat on their bodies and who have spent much of their lives in sunnier climes, which happens to be the case with Miss Macpherson.

Unfortunately, the fact that the light source is coming from the side rather than from a camera flashbulb in front of her in this picture only appears to exaggerate the effect.

Surgeons who analysed this picture added that the effect is also apparently made worse since the photograph captures the exact moment when the skin on her right thigh is moving over the leg muscle as the weight is transferred from her left to her right leg.

Miss Macpherson, who has two children, is one of the most successful supermodels of her generation and among the very few who have been able to sustain a career while others have fallen by the wayside.

Cosmetic surgeon Alex Karidis said: ‘It’s an unfortunate picture in that it appears to have captured the exact moment during her walking towards camera when the weight is transferring onto the right leg. It is the moment of impact when the skin is travelling over the leg muscle. You probably would not notice the effect on a very young individual but only because the skin quality would be much better.’

‘Elle is 45 and has presumably had a lot of sun over the years. She has a lot of freckles and the skin quality has obviously reduced with age. It just goes to show that age gets the better of everyone. The effect – which you can call creping – does happen with age and especially when someone has lived in the sun a lot in California and Australia. Women’s skin also tends to age a little earlier than men’s skin.’

‘Creping is also more common in skinnier people. Fat tends to pad out the skin and supports it more. If you have a very low body mass index like Elle does then basically you have skin travelling over muscle with no fat in between. Whereas if she was slightly plumper, she would not have the creping phenomenon as much.’

Cosmetic surgeon Riccardo Frati suggested such a phenomenon was usually associated with dramatic weight loss in patients who has had too much liposuction but that it could have also been the result of sun damage. There is no suggestion that Miss Macpherson, who has never been overweight, has had liposuction on her legs.

The unfortunate picture was taken last night as the supermodel helped to launch the latest Jaguar. She wore a glittering £6,560 Herve Leger bandage dress teamed with a pair of vertiginous Christian Louboutin heels.

While the ensemble was undoubtedly a stunning combination the micro mini and gold sequins could be seen as a rather mutton-dressed-as-lamb look for the forty-five year old.

[From Daily Mail]

Oh, for goodness sake. I’m not any kind of Elle MacPherson fan, but enough is enough. She looks gorgeous! She could pass for a woman in her early thirties. Her skin looks fine, her body looks fine. It was just a screwed up picture. She has lovely legs. Enough. The only small, teeny-tiny criticism is that the dress is simply too short. There, I’m done. That’s my only complaint – and I would have said it even if some twenty-something girl was wearing the same dress. I wasn’t even going to write this because I found it so offensive – but now other sites are picking up the story that Elle has “cellulite”. All because of the Daily Mail, a newspaper that has run articles about the attractiveness of celebrity knees, for the love of God.

Here’s Elle Macpherson at the launch of the new Jaguar XJ in London on Thursday. Images thanks to WENN.com .