The day before I met the oldest supermodel in the world, I was staying with my grandparents. It was a lovely few days, which typically involved copious amounts of roast lunches, a fierce rationing of after-dinner chocolates and a series of stern lectures focused on the questionable ethics of the local parish council and the absurdity of vegetarians, vegans, and any other non-carnivorous diets. I got the train home with a certain self-satisfied fondness, exaggeratedly rolling my eyes at their staunch conservatism whilst googling the menu of my local Pan-Asian restaurant. There is nothing like a visit to your grandparent’s house to make you feel a little anti-establishment.

I arrived at Daphne Selfe’s house in the wake of this smugness. When she opened the door, however, I had to drop my unconvincingly self-satisfied act — it was impossible not to in the presence of a figure so disarmingly genuine and charismatic. As soon as I sat down with Selfe at her kitchen table, it became clear that she was going to defy all attempts at categorisation, not because she is abrasive, nor because she is tempestuous, but because she is a woman to whom things happen. Even at the age of 85, she is still instinctively drawn to action — recently she was photographed lying in a room filled with kittens, and before that she donned a conical bra and posed as Madonna. She does not leave much time for the crossword.

“No one wants to know about my autobiography,” she told me, “because it’s much too nice. You have to be sensational.” Yet Selfe is utterly extraordinary — she recently finished shooting TK Maxx’s latest campaign, but she spent the weekend at the village fete. She is a mother and a grandmother, but since she turned 70 has shot with Rankin, Nick Knight and Mario Testino. She crumbles every boundary with a shrug of her shoulders, ridiculing the notion of retirement and all of its patronising associations.

Typically, Selfe’s career has not followed a conventional trajectory. She was not discovered by the world of high fashion until she was 70, when she was selected to walk in a show for Red or Dead. This lead to a feature in Vogue on older women, and she was subsequently signed by the prestigious agency Models 1.

Selfe’s first love was horses, a passion to which she dedicated herself after leaving school. This was not an exercise in Jilly Cooper-esq equine glamour — she was not cavorting around on thoroughbreds whilst rubbing shoulders with the rich and the famous. Instead, she took a job at a riding school, exercising horses, cleaning their tack and even breaking them in. “I got kicked on the head,” she laughed, “and I broke my collarbone — I fell off every morning.” Looking at Selfe, this is easy to imagine — behind her piercing eyes and long, ethereal hair lies a hardiness, a determination to succeed.

Eventually, the riding turned into farming, and when Selfe could no longer hack the physical labour, she took a job in a department store, unaware that this seemingly menial decision would set her on the winding path to success nearly fifty years later. Her first modelling job was posing for the front cover of a local magazine. “There was an advertisement in the store,” Selfe told me, “‘Girls Wanted.’ And I was the one that got it.” Her career began as it would continue, a series of events that ran seamlessly into one another; there was a fashion show in the department store, and three weeks training at the Gabby Young agency in London, where girls were taught to walk with books on their heads and get out of cars without flashing their underwear. There were numerous hours spent posing for painters, or life modelling at the Slade, and even a stint as an extra at the ballet. Selfe does not look back on her colourful past flippantly, but with an animated vitality — when I asked her if she was ever nervous she looked at me quizzically and responded, “Well you just do it, don’t you?”.

Her attitude seems disconnected from contemporary conceptions of the fashion industry, where models are deified as global superstars. Selfe started out at the dawn of colour photography, at a time when it was the clothes, not the models, that were the commodities. “Models were not considered supermodels in those days, they were very often nice people.” When Selfe was in her twenties, she lived in the same building as her aunt and found an in-house job at a furrier, modelling their coats and doing their books. “It was fantastic,” she reminisced, “they made you a little black dress, and you got your nails done, and your hair done every week at Steiners.”

Selfe frowns when asked if she thinks that a positive aspect of modelling today is that it is more egalitarian, and provides opportunities for an increasingly diverse, international cross-section of people — she thinks that modelling transcends these social differences. “To be a good model,” she informed me, “isn’t really about good looks. It’s about work ethic. A lot of people aren’t really that pretty, but they’ve got something, maybe a good personality — an indefinable something.” She thinks that her “something” is her ability to act, to play a part for the camera. “I had to kiss a Frenchman all morning,” she told me conspiratorially, “he was quite nice… he was odd I think… the annoying thing is that he was a bit stubbly.”

Perhaps, for Selfe, the biggest change that she has had to come to terms with is the change in herself. Old age must be hard to accept, especially in an industry that relies so heavily on the use of the body. She must find it difficult to reconcile the physical deceleration of her body with the acceleration of her career. This is where Selfe’s frank honesty is most impressive, for she is confident enough to admit that change is frustrating, but that it is something that you have to learn to accept. She can no longer walk catwalks as easily, and high heels are not an option. She cannot even wear belts without discomfort, which she attributes to shrinking. But physical change has not brought decline, and at 85, Selfe’s beauty is still evolving. She is not withered but lined — “I haven’t had anything done,” she declared, “because your entire history is in your face.” She is not self-important enough to view herself as a role model, but certainly sets a pioneering example. We tend to equate youth with success and beauty, an assumption that Selfe’s flourishing career mocks —  she is far from retiring, and making more money than she ever has before.

Since turning 70, Selfe has graduated from the regional catwalks of her youth, and has been flown to Los Angeles, Milan, Beijing and South Africa. A few years ago she flew to Sicily to shoot for Dolce and Gabbana. “They were all called Bianca,” she told me, “and I couldn’t understand a word anyone said, but it was fantastic.” It really does seem that Selfe is fearless, and that above all, she is fully committed to making the most out of life. Even when I tried to probe her on some of the more sensitive aspects of the fashion industry, such as its unhealthy attitude towards weight, she would only answer to some extent, preferring to focus on its positive aspects, such as its beauty and its art. “Yes, some of the younger girls do some stupid diets,” she nodded, but then admitted to the paradox that shapes the industry, “but designer clothes do look better on thinner people.” She does not condone this unrealistic depiction of the body, but sees it as part of the modern condition, a neurosis that she does not share. She is part of the wartime generation — for Selfe, fresh and sustainable eating is a way of life, not a trend. “I don’t waste anything, even now,” she remarked, “and I won’t eat anything I haven’t made.”

What Selfe makes clear is that it is too easy to cultivate a tendency to over-analyse, to have a cynical desire to find fault in every system. When I asked her if she plans to stop working in fashion any time soon, she simply looked at me and responded, “Why would I?” Daphne Selfe is four times older than me, but she has a greater thirst for life. I want to be like her, but I fear I wouldn’t keep up — she’s far too fun. We should be the one’s moving into retirement homes and Selfe should take the helm. I am going to cancel my restaurant reservations at my local Pan-Asian; I am even going to admit that I do not like Tofu. It is far too outlandish for me and my conventionality. There is nothing like a good pub lunch. If you need me, I will be at my grandparent’s house writing my daily letter of complaint to The Irish Times on the atrocity that is the wind-farm, and the utter absurdity of a woman older than me daring to show her body in Vogue magazine.