It was a fashion feature in The Times Saturday Magazine by the clever and fashion savvy Prue White that got Jan thinking about the dividing line, the fault-line if you prefer, between fashion for the young and thin and fashion for women over 50. Even those who may be very slim.
Actually, that’s not strictly true. As a co-founder of this website, SoSensational, the fashion shop specifically for 50-plus women, Jan spends a lot of time thinking about fashion for the grown up woman. A lot. But these are her thoughts on this particular issue:
“The fault line that divides fashion for the young (and thin), and fashion for the 50-plus woman who may, as we said earlier, also be very slim, is rarely so clearly illustrated as in this particular feature – perhaps it was more obvious to me because its focus, like SoSensational currently, was on party wear and animal print.
“The fashion feature was headlined ‘The New Glamour’ and the text referred to leopard-print, faux fur and glitter on which SoSensational was also focusing. It had lush photos of model Lois from the Wilhelmina Agency shot by Matthew Eades. It was immaculately styled. As I looked at the pictures, I remarked to my husband: ‘That model would look fabulous in a bin bag.’
“I realise it was a wholly unoriginal observation, but I felt that it revealed an important truth: that if you are aged around 22, lithe and with great bones, thick hair and flawless complexion, any clothes (or, indeed, the aforementioned bin bag) will look fabulous on you.
“A model AKA a Beautiful Human Clothes Horse, especially when professionally made-up and blow-dried would look ravishing in a sack… It is we older, no longer so lithe women who need the right clothes; that is, we are more of a challenge; it takes more thinking and considerably more effort to look fabulous at 50-plus, especially taking into account body issues such as saggy arms and maybe a thicker waist. We won’t even mention a bit of belly-flesh, a fuller bust or wide thighs and hips as they are not so much age-related as body-shape related, and are issues which can be helped by an awareness of which cuts flatter us most.
“Models, of course, suffer none of these issues; which is why they are models AKA Beautiful Human Clothes-Horses. However they have their own issues, as was very sharply illustrated to me at the theatre recently. I was at a performance of The Red Barn at The National Theatre. Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki plays one of the main roles; you may remember her from The Night Manager, the BBC’s adaptation of the John Le Carre novel. In The Red Barn she appears on stage naked in one scene.
“Debicki is 26 and strikingly beautiful. She is also, at 6’ 2” so very tall. She is built exactly like a model though she is actually a former ballet dancer who switched from studying ballet to studying drama. As she demonstrated in The Night Manager, in The Red Barn and in The Great Gatsby, in which she also appeared, she looks absolutely gorgeous in clothes; less so out of them. We do not make this observation to denigrate this very talented and beautiful actress but merely to highlight the body issues: that being young and very slender offers big advantages when wearing clothes but has its own down-sides when not wearing any.
“While we are on the subject of very young, very skinny models, Cyndy and I would like to have a little moan about very young models being used everywhere, for all fashion brands, even where a brand is targeting older consumers. That is why on SoSensational you will frequently see pictures cropped to remove the models’ heads… that means we think the dress or whatever will look good on a 50-plus woman but we don’t want you to be put off by seeing it on someone younger than your daughter.”
Are you fed up of seeing very young models when the clothing is age-neutral? Tell us what you think.
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