You Can Learn A LOT from an Old Bird

"People need to get less stressed about fashion and get into the enjoyment of it"

"Take what is available and contour it towards what your needs are."

The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas

I have grey hair and I'm getting crows feet.  Every day I have London snot...that's when there's mysterious black shizzle up your nose from all the fumes at the end of the day..and my idea of a good night in at the moment is working through the Poirot or Downton boxset and doing my tapestry. I have also got unreasonably excited when I'm in bed before midnight.  What does all this mean?  Am I on a slip road to Golden Oldie-town heading towards the earlybird special and a night of Bingo with the Boy...(actually it would be backgammon if he had his way) ?  Or am I in denial about a certain birthday that happened nearly a week ago? YES I AM.

"Don't take your self too seriously."

"Dress for the theatre of your life." Lynn Dell 78.

I had decided that I was cool with it, aging is no big deal, it happens to everyone blah blah blah but when certain people reacted to my new age with glances that said, "You're two minutes away from the Stannah stairlift dearie", I began to feel perturbed.  I've written before about how happy I was that it wasn't just prepubescent girls lining the catwalks and spoken about my admiration for the many beautiful older models including Carmen dell Orefice but was I ready to start feeling past my prime when I wasn't sure I'd had my prime yet?

I don't mind going grey that much. I've already decided that I will have Cruella DeVille hair as soon as I can no longer pull off dying it it's god given colour and wrinkles give a face character so on an afternoon of counting my grey hairs, sorting my tapestry wools and blog surfing, imagine my delight when I came across a blog called Advanced Style.

Alice Carey, early 60s

Written by Ari Seth Cohen, I'll let him use his own words, "I roam the streets of New York looking for the most stylish and creative older folks. Respect your elders and let these ladies and gents teach you a thing or two about living life to the fullest.  Advanced Style offers proof from the wise and silver-haired set that personal style advances with age."  Darn right Ari. I think this is something we can all aspire to.  It was so hard to pick just a few to show you but I hope it makes you smile as much as it did me, Happy Friday!X

Iris Apfel for Vogue Japan shot by Ari

Granny Chic

Recently a frightening thing has happened to me..I have started to become OLD. Now, there is nothing wrong in becoming old gracefully with style and class and hopefully a wardrobe of Balenciaga or Westwood at my back but going grey at 26 is not to be born. GREY HAIR and I'm only just past the age of having a Young Persons Railcard!! I should have realised it was a matter of time, Asian hair does tend to grey earlier and one of the downsides of being genetically endowed with black glossy locks is that the little buggers stand out more than they would do on a blondie.  Perhaps the appearance of these wispy, translucent follicles has also affected my brain, this week I have decided to start a pension, done lots of work on my tapestry and very nearly bought a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.  On the flip side to this I've been to Shoreditch House, The Duke of Cambridge (London's only fully organic pub I believe) and discovered a fabulous Mad Men-esque cocktail bar in my hood and not got back home before 1am and it's only Wednesday.  There's life in the old girl yet!

In fashion however, age has been creeping in...The sphere where youth and beauty reign supreme has started to usher in a New Generation..except they ain't new, 15 year old Justin Bieber listening, Twihard reading nymphets, this is the old guard coming back.  Next season's Dolce & Gabbana advertising campaign, unveiled last week, stars Madonna (51). Hot label of the moment Celine – the campaign every model must have wanted this season – has chosen a veteran face from the 1990s superwaif era, Emma Balfour (40). Balenciaga stars Stella Tennant (39); Louis Vuitton, whose new collection was dubbed "And God Created Woman" by designer Marc Jacobs, featured Elle Macpherson (47) on the catwalk and stars Christy Turlington (41) in its latest print campaign.

                                                         Elle on the catwalk at Vuitton

Such common sense is completely revolutionary. Until recently, few in the industry would acknowledge that there was something a teensy bit shallow and moronic and possibly even dubious about taking a 16-year-old model with a head full of GCSE revision notes and dressing her up as a sophisticated femme fatale, arranging her supine on an unmade hotel bed, while dripping with diamond bracelets and thousand-pound handbags and wearing a bored-of-it-all expression. Extreme youth was part and parcel of the fantasy of fashion.

The new visibility of older models is part of a shift in fashion from fantasy to wearability. For the past 10 years, one adjective has reigned supreme above others in fashion. If it was good – whether it was a model, a dress, a handbag – it was "fabulous". Fabulous, in the Oxford English Dictionary, has two meanings: extraordinary, and also "having no basis in reality; mythical". Our obsession with fabulousness was always very much about a yearning for the impossible, a boomtime obsession with pushing boundaries. The word feels, now, like a compliment from another era.

The age of austerity dawned in fashion months before George Osborne got his hands on the keys to No 11. In March, the Paris catwalks were full of grown-up clothes in sensible, wearable colours. Easy-to-do ponytails and walkable-heeled shoes are hot topics in fashion right now.  Next month, the all-important September issues of the glossy magazines appear. Current industry rumour has it that the cover girls for the American giants run as follows: Julia Roberts for Elle, Halle Berry for Vogue, and Jennifer Aniston for Harpers Bazaar. If this is true, Aniston – at 41 – will be the youngest cover girl of the big three. If older women can reappear in fashion, then anything is possible..and maybe I'll keep my grey hairs...

And finally...my favourite older model..at 79, Carmen dell Orefice.  Please may I age like her?

Lastly, shot in Paris, August, 1957 by Richard Avedon