Fashion over 50- Do I have to?

I’ve always been a “plain Jane” so I don’t know much about fashion beyond watching episodes of Project Runway and Making the Cut.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I suggested the topic Fashion Over 50 during a recent writing class with members of Crone Awakening Wisdom. My personal fashion sense is, “It’s clean, it’s just a teeny stain and I’m not going anywhere”,  so I needed to look into the subject from different points of view to grasp the concept of fashion over 50.

There are hundreds of websites offering tips on how to dress your age, and there are lovely pictures of finely dressed ladies, all perfectly styled and photographed.  “Start with the basics” is a standard bullet point for most of these sites; every woman should have black dress pants, a black dress, an evening top or dress, and a nice blazer or jacket.  Gosh, my favourite “dress” pants/trousers are over 32 years old and I’ll be wearing them again for whatever appropriate occasion requires me to posh myself up. 

I used to wear hip huggers with a thick leather belt, but I haven’t worn pants with zippers in about 40 years. Tube tops used to be in fashion too, but now that my boobs are on my belly, I’m better off tucking them into my stretchy leggings and using them as thigh warmers. My hot orange mini skirt was very trendy, but it got me in trouble with the boys and my legs always turned purple during winter recess. Remember blue mascara and Candie’s, those awful wooden shoes we thought were so cool?  They were the most uncomfortable shoes ever made, so why did I bother? Because I wanted to follow the trend and be “in fashion”?

This is the reason I wear baggy clothes

Of course, as I aged, my tastes changed and so did my levels of comfort. What worked for me decades ago, doesn’t work for me anymore. This puckered old body doesn’t want a belt, it doesn’t even want a bra! And as much as I might dream about wearing a lacy ruffled top and a pencil skirt, they don’t work for my body and seem very confining to me. The picture of me swaddled tightly and sitting on an oversized red chair put me right off wearing tight clothes.

Another side of fashion is shopping, and as much as I love to hunt and gather, we left most of our possessions in the states when we moved to Scotland, and emptying my life of “stuff” was liberating so I’m really thoughtful about what I buy these days. I try to avoid making purchases “just because I like it”.   

Finding a nice patterned top that’s comfortable, comes in my size, looks decent on me, and isn’t emblazoned with a heart or a city name, can be quite a challenge.  And some of the patterns for women my size are just plain ugly and they make me wonder if the buyer had gas that day. A decent quality tunic can cost over £70 ($93)!  But when I get lucky and find a top I love slipping over my head, I’ll wear the poor thing until I can read a newspaper through the fabric. I have actually cried over having to dispose of treasured tops.  Pathetic?  Maybe, but we like what we like. 

Most zippered pants were too baggy in the ball sack area because I’m short and fat, so leggings are my thing. They come in almost every colour and pattern, and you can get a decent pair on a budget. When I joined the gym I bought a few pairs of sports-type leggings. I call them “miracle pants” because they hold ALL this in so amazingly well. As comfortable as they are, when you’re built like me there’s always the risk of having an exposed “camel belly”.  That’s what happened one day at my gym’s Pump class.  Little did I know that the seam of my miracle leggings split my belly into two separate portions. I will never be able to unsee the very zoomed-in photo of me lying on that bench. 

The other thing I think about when buying new clothes, is where do the old clothes go to die? Donating a top I can read through isn’t fair to the charity shop. They wouldn’t be able to sell something so well worn, and it would be a waste of the time donated by volunteer workers. Throwing it in the bin like household trash doesn’t seem right either. That’s just more garbage for the Earth to swallow.

Here’s an interesting fact. Did you know the fashion industry causes 10% of global industrial pollution?  According to The Carbon Literacy Project, the “entire lifecycle of a garment, from manufacturing to transportation to, ultimately, ending up in landfill, in total, releases 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year.”  Reading stuff like this makes me proud that my fancy pants are 32 years old!

Gaining respect by our appearance

Another fashionable point of view is offered by a young woman who made a video about a friend she thought was pretty. She explains that her friend started wearing makeup and high heels and was suddenly treated with more respect. This young Crone-to-be points out that the patriarchy created and sustains the fashion industry, and that some women may present themselves a certain way to gain more respect from men. This perspective is worth a listen.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1039267077638328

And then we Crones need to hear messages like this guy’s view on fashion over 50. "I think that after a certain age your skirt should really be at or below the knee, no matter how beautiful your legs are. It looks more appropriate, and it doesn’t look like you’re trying to look young.”  The quote comes from a well-known fashion stylist, Paul Cavaco, who does not wear a skirt.

I'm not a circumstance

The word “appropriate” means “suitable and proper for the circumstances” according to the Oxford Dictionary. One could easily understand that a bright orange skimpy dress wouldn’t be appropriate for most funerals, but I'm not a circumstance and if I want to show my cellulite thighs at the dance club in my short orange dress, that's what I'm going to do. He's welcome to strap on a bra, slip into a grannie dress and some heels and have himself a good time.

I also found “rules” for what women over 50 are supposed to wear. In an article by The Guardian called ‘We want to wear what we want, but don’t want to get it wrong’ – how to decode fashion in your 50s.” (March 2023).  A company called Hope Fashion, which offers clothes for Crones, had to crowd-fund from their customers because the male dominated  industry wouldn't invest in older women. From a business point of view, that’s just dumb because there are 87 million women over 50 living in the UK, the US, and Canada alone! 
 

The article goes on to say that many women “have a lot of clothes but feel as if they have nothing to wear – and then feel guilty about it. Their main problem, she says, is that shopping for clothes has become daunting and exhausting.” My view goes back to the industry being patriarchal and wanting us to have a certain look. Maybe we look in the mirror and can’t achieve the standards they've set for us and feel we have "nothing to wear". 

She dared to wear cargo pants

While I’m the jeans, t-shirt, and Birkenstocks girl, my cousin Carole had a much higher standard of dress and appearance. Physically, we looked very much alike but we were polar opposites in how we carried ourselves. I always admired her sense of style, especially because she was a large woman. She dared to wear cargo pants/trousers and often wore dresses to work as a school teacher. Her nails and makeup were always on point, while I stopped wearing makeup in the 1980s. Fashion was important to my sweet cousin and it’s one of the things that makes me smile when I think of her.

I appreciate art and design in all its glorious forms, and really dig seeing a smartly dressed woman, no matter her size, age, or personal style. Show me sassy, show me your innocence, flaunt your curves, let's see that cleavage, cinch in that belt. And if you just want to look “put together” in a casual way, that’s exactly what you should do. Either way, I will applaud you and tell you how beautiful you are for just being a Crone. 

But I got news for the testosterone driven fashion industry, baggy and slightly unkept is also a fashion statement and it’s the one I’ve been embracing for decades. Comfort is queen for this feisty old Crone. 

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/fashion-trends/g22876839/fashion-for-women-over-50/

https://carbonliteracy.com/fast-fashions-carbon-footprint/

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/mar/24/how-to-decode-fashion-in-your-50s-women