As she sat in the makeup chair, dressed in a plush terrycloth robe while two women did her nails and another did her makeup, Tziporah Salamon knew the day she had longed for had finally arrived. The 62-year-old New Yorker has a long resume of disparate jobs: schoolteacher, performer, hostess and shop girl, to name a few. But in April, she finally added model for a high-fashion house to the list. "I felt like such a princess, a queen for a day," Salamon said. "I was as high as a kite." For many, the life of a model is the stuff of dreams, an aspiration so far out of reach that we would never dare utter it to friends. But some fashion labels are putting the focus on women (and men) who aren't typical calendar girls. Salamon is one of 11 "real people" selected to appear in French designer Lanvin's winter ad campaign, which is generating buzz for using people of all sizes, colors and ages to create intimate images that resemble portraits. It's about bringing a sense of reality to fashion to show that the lofty world of high style is not as unattainable as it seems, said Alber Elbaz, creative director of Lanvin. "Fashion doesn't look good only on models, it can look good on different people of different ages and different body shapes," he said. "We didn't think there would be such a big talk because we just did it and we thought let's try to work with real people. Let's do street casting, let's work with different men and women of different ages and see what comes out of it." None of them fit the typical model mold because they aren't professional models. Casting agent Zan Ludlum found Salamon and 82-year-old Jacquie "Tajah" Murdock through the popular street style blog Advanced Style, which documents men and women of a certain age. Others came from street scouting, including one of the older male models, who was spotted walking out of a basement bar in New York's East Village, said Ludlum, whose agency scouted the models. While the Lanvin models are not professionals, they possess a certain mystique. "It's beyond visual. Sure, they might have great eyes or features but it's more about their presence, their ownership of their own individuality," Ludlum said. "You might see someone who has style, but if you strip away everything, are they still powerful? Because we are taking them out of who they are and putting them in new clothes. Are they interesting beyond what they're wearing?" Of course, pounding the pavement in search of raw talent is nothing new. But it's becoming increasingly common as fashion and style slowly embrace different ideals of beauty. Earlier this month, American Apparel revealed that the new face of its ad campaign would be 60-year-old Jacky O'Shaughnessy, who was spotted in a New York restaurant. In swimwear, Spanish designer Dolores Cortés chose an infant with Down syndrome to be the face of the brand's 2013 DC Kids ads. It would have been easy to create a beautiful photo with a beautiful model, said Elbaz, especially working with photographer Steven Meisel and some of the top names in hair and makeup. But, at this level, it's important to think outside the box and move forward with each campaign, he said. "I'm always looking for a story," said Elbaz, whose career includes stints with Geoffrey Beene, Guy Laroche and Yves Saint Laurent. "In high fashion we're always accused of doing things that are not very relevant, not the real world. I know that it's important sometimes to do fantasy but I felt like touching people and going back to different women and men, especially the idea of different ages and body shapes." It's a timely message, he said, in an era of cultural bias toward youth-oriented ideals of beauty. "The phenomenon I see today of women erasing their age -- nobody is allowed to have an age anymore, nobody is allowed to have wrinkles or imperfections," he said. "I thought, let's change that, let's show that fashion can be amazing on 81-year-olds and 17-year-olds, on Tziporah, who is not [European] size 36, and she looks gorgeous."