Living & Arts

An 'older' kind of vintage

In print | November 13, 2008

The fashion industry is not always kind to older folks. These days, runways seem to be dominated by underage Eastern European models with the physiques of prepubescent boys. The window of working time for such girls is short—they’ll pass their prime before their early-to-mid twenties, save for some notorious supermodels like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. With few exceptions, youth is glorified and, similarly, those captured on film for street fashion blogs tend to have these things in common: they’re young and they like to party.

But take a closer look at what that red-lipsticked girl smoking a cigarette on The Facehunter is wearing. Why, isn’t that Grandma Rhoda’s canary yellow Golden-Girls-esque pantsuit? Or what about all of those slouchy grandpa cardigans? Or that lovely Florida retirement home floral print dress? From the looks of things, street fashion around the world seems to be diverging in two directions. There are those who take the futuristic approach, with ensembles comprised of metallic skinny jeans, stiletto gladiator heels and some sort of intricate top, and then there are those taking fashion cues from their grandparents. Instead of dressing like twenty-something-year-olds, they mix in elements of traditionally dowdy and mumsy clothing. Intersecting with “geek chic,” accessories such as the giant oversized glasses that the elderly need to drive, lace-up oxford walking shoes and leather briefcase satchels are now being reproduced by stores like Urban Outfitters and H&M. Marketed as vintage-inspired, they sell just about as well as the vintage originals up for auction on eBay, which is to say: like hot cakes. Though such a way of dress seems to ignore all the tenets of what we’d known as style—like fit and cut, material and design—these fashions are as popular as they’ve ever been.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised when street fashion photos of the elderly started popping up on various blogs such as Style Bubble, Painfully Hip and Liebemarlene Vintage. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but then I realized that all their photos came from one source: Advanced Style, a street-style blog capturing the looks of the “wizened and silver-haired set.” The site has only been around for a few months, but it already has over 120,000 page views thanks to word of mouth. Instead of seeing style as a fixed entity associated with youthful beauty, the blog’s trio of (young) writers set out to prove that style comes in all different forms. As for the younger set, style for the elderly is just as much about attitude as it is about looks, proving the wise saying “it’s not what you wear, it’s how you wear it.”

But what about those who are simply unaware that what they are wearing has any relevance to current fashion, who fail to recognize that the way they dress is in fact very hip and cool? While this is refreshing in that it avoids pretension and the dreaded trying-too-hard affliction, does the lack of fashion consciousness mean a lack of style? Over fall break, I was looking through old family photo albums and was shocked to see how “hip” my parents were in college. Honestly, you could have given them a couple of fixes and they would have been dead ringers for any hipster walking the streets of Williamsburg today. When I asked them about their clothes, my dad just shrugged and said those were just the clothes that he happened to have and that he didn’t really think about it too much. He was certainly surprised, and a little pleased, when I told him that people our age actually dress like that now. My mom seemed a little more conscious of what she wore, but said that clothes were always secondary to essentials like food, due to money, and that because of this she made a lot of her own clothes. So is style based on one’s own perceptions, or is it dependent on what others perceive? I don’t think I can fully answer that question, except to say that it’s probably an intersection of both, but I will note that it is pretty amusing how styles and trends are recycled from one generation to the next.

With the exception of The Sartorialist, few street-style blogs feature older people, and I don’t know of any beside Advanced Style that focus solely on such an age group. After looking at blog post after blog post of doe-eyed, skinny-legged girls, it’s nice to see something a little different, something a little more organic and unassuming. It does make me wonder, though, if style is something that not only stays with a person, but also gets better with time.

Ming is a sophomore. You can reach her at mcai1@swarthmore.edu.