For most people, retirement is a time to slide into some hobbies, take a trip here and there, and maybe spend some quality time in the armchair. When Carolyn Doelling retired at age 70, she became a fashion model.
The now 77-year-old Berkeley woman fashioned a busy modeling career not long ago, jetting between the Bay Area and New York to pose for magazines, clothing campaigns and lifestyle shoots with companies like Estée Lauder, CVS and Athleta.
“It’s almost a miracle,” Doelling said sitting in the kitchen of her Berkeley home. “It’s amazing because I never had any aspirations to be a model.”
In her 70s, Doelling addressed her personal doldrums about advancing age by revamping herself into a model, becoming the face for boutique brands and lifestyle articles, even chronicling her other recently discovered passion: kickboxing.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Inside her living room, which included a grand piano, sat a coffee table covered in magazines and clippings showing Doelling dressed in colorful outfits, cavorting in rustic markets and photo studios.
Before she retired from a career in corporate marketing and customer service about seven years ago, Doelling didn’t even like having her picture taken. As she hit her 70s, she began to ponder life and felt a personal crisis of age and identity.
“When I retired, I realized that I was being overlooked and underestimated,” she said. “People had kind of kicked me to the curb as a 70 year old.”
Doelling retaliated by setting a goal to up her own style game and add more color and variety to her wardrobe. As she incorporated fashion into her ethos, she indeed began to feel more noticed.
The life-changing moment came during a visit to the McMullen Boutique in downtown Oakland. Owner Sherri McMullen asked Doelling about her aspirations. Doelling said she was concerned women her age were giving up. McMullen asked if she’d be willing to pose for some photos, which ultimately became the beginning of Doelling’s transformation.
“We took photos for Instagram and other social media, and people loved it,” Doelling recalled. “It was a different look, a different idea. It was not the 23 year old, size 000.”
It’s possible the seeds of Doelling’s personal revolution were sown in her childhood growing up in rural North Carolina. Her great-grandfather was a slave; her uncle’s, sharecroppers. She grew up in Jim Crow South with segregation in full tilt — though to her it felt merely like the Black community was just tightly knit, encircled within its own resources. She earned $5 a day picking tobacco from sunup to sundown.
Two things from her childhood emerged as lifelong themes: independence and fashion.
“We were all encouraged as young people to do and be — and civil rights was such a big part of our lives,” she said.
She also remembered seeing people decked out in suits and dresses to march in civil rights rallies.
“I think back on how consistent it was to have dressing up or fashion and style be a part of our lives," she said.
Doelling eventually got married, moved to the Bay Area and raised two kids, who landed in successful careers of their own. But she saw her own opportunities shrink with age. Once she began to earn accolades for her modeling, she realized she now had a platform to speak out about those issues. Her career became less about posing for photos and more about striking a pose for other senior women.
“I feel like I’m also making an argument to designers and other people who are in position to choose who it is who represents their product," she said.
Among her demanding dual-coast schedule, Doelling particularly enjoys modeling for local Bay Area boutique designers like McMullen and another personal favorite, Taylor Jay, who owns two clothing shops in the East Bay and fabricates her clothing in Oakland.
“She is a ball of fire. She is such an inspiration to so many women,” said Jay. “She just shows you that style and grace has no limit.”
When Doelling is on set for a photo shoot, she notices few other women are over the age of 40, and no one is over 70. Those experiences are the fuel for her personal campaign to see senior women recognized, which has included penning an article for AARP titled “I refuse to be invisible.”
“My wish is that – and I know it’s happening – that other women will see and go, ‘You know, I can do that, too,’” Doelling said.
Through all her recent accomplishments, Doelling hasn’t let her foot off the gas. She dreams of seeing her image scroll on a giant monitor in New York’s Times Square or strutting down a fashion show runway in Paris or New York. At 77, she is just beginning.
“It’s a wonderful way to retire,” she laughed.
