Why should the term ‚old-lady chic‘ be seen as an insult?
I have been reading about “frump chic” – an oxymoron if ever there was one – also known as “old-lady chic”. Remember when I wrote canada goose coat 1000 bulbs garland about grey and the below-the-line discussion was all about the Whistles photographs of woolly jumpers and long skirts? That’s old-lady chic. Last week, Jess Cartner-Morley wrote quite correctly that “the older you get, the harder it is to pull off old-lady clothes”. This is because to wear it successfully you must be neither a frump, nor an old lady. Just when we think fashion is beginning to “get” older people read more here, they come up with a look that really can’t be worn by anyone over 30.
I don’t have an issue with the term old-lady best ideas about canada goose outlet on pinterest chic. Is it insulting to be called an old lady? As a woman inhabiting that strange hinterland between canada goose coat 1000 youth-erly and older-ly, I find I am more relaxed now about thinking of myself as “old”. “Old” in itself (and to me certainly) is not a pejorative term; “old” means best price for canada goose jacket familiar and comforting, wise and steady. It’s only when someone adds something nasty to it such as “dried-up old [insert four-letter word of your choice]” that it becomes an insult.
If I look at buy canada goose parka uk the current crop of fantastically stylish, beautiful and beautifully dressed women of 60-plus who have become “the face of …”, such as as Charlotte Rampling and Jessica Lange, then old-lady chic becomes a very desirable thing. But it’s almost as canada goose coat 1000 calorie if the fashion world sees this and wants to slap us down for getting too uppity. By bracketing “frump chic” and “old-lady chic” together they are conflating two separate issues by assuming that old(er) women are frumps (because, after all, young people are never frumps).
“Age-appropriate” is another loaded phrase. In the case of older women, it almost inevitably results in us looking older and is considered a good thing (put that wrinkly cleavage away!). I feel inclined to scrap the term entirely as a reference to older age groups – if everyone was age-appropriate, middle and best price canada goose jacket outlet usa online store old age would be bloody dull. Let’s swap it for “modern” instead. It removes any suggestion of us being inappropriate because we choose to dress according to current trends, which buy canada goose jacket cheap at the moment are mysteriously seen as wrong over “a certain age”. (And what is a certain age exactly?)
Frump chic (as I now choose to call it) appears to be the ultimate irony. The things we think we can safely wear have been given a “nudge, nudge” makeover and rendered kitsch and precious and not for us because if we are old and we wear “old” clothes we cannot evoke “light sartorial irony” to pull the thing off. We need to reclaim the world old from those who employ it with said irony. As Mary Beard said when speaking about exactly this at the Cheltenham literary festival: “I want an old movement. By the time can can you wash a canada goose parka you wash a canada goose jacket in the washer I die I want ‘old’ to be something we say about ourselves with pride.”
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