A colleague has expressed an interest in how older females deal with the immortal problems of their appearance: coping with hair and skin and deciding what clothes look right for what occasion – what to buy and where.
I suppose she is right to assume we would not tackle such things in the same way as once we would have done – and not just because we have got older. For one thing, if we think back long enough Paris really did set the scene: Dior launched the New Look with his unimaginably longer skirts – at the first press show he was reassured by an aide saying, “It’s all right, they’re pulling at their hems.”
There used to be more things like “the colour of the year”, as well as a given length of skirts. And way back then there was even, in Vogue, specific advice for “Mrs Exeter”, who was assumed to be at least middle aged. There is no such advice now.
Of course those writing about fashion do get irritated letters from seniors about the wrong length, or the lack of buttons or zips where they used to be. But by and large there’s enough variety available for them – I mean us – to be able to find something that suits. And that is what really matters, rather than being in fashion. Just as important, of course, is that it keeps us warm, though Browning didn’t actually say:
“Grow old along with me!
The vest is yet to be.”
At a posh event I went to recently there were several women of a certain age who had the right elegant clothes, but fashionably long, loose hair which simply didn’t work with their wrinkled skin. It isn’t just a matter about what is good in Vogue as what looks good on us – or at least what we hope does.
What do you think? Have your say below
