Oh, Felicity! Isn’t 70 a bit late for a fashion mid life crisis?
For many women, there is one special role model we secretly want to be like. Mine has always been actress Felicity Kendal.
In the long- running TV series The Good Life, Felicity played the cutest, most adorable, delectable veggiegrowing Earth goddess. (Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t a patch on Felicity’s greenfingered, home- brewing character living in the London suburbs.)
Like many TV stars — although she insists she’s a serious actor — Felicity seemed to have it all. Husbands, occasional love affairs, an enduring career on stage and TV with countless awards, children and then grandchildren.
Throughout everything life has thrown at her, she has remained serenely and sublimely beautiful and cool.
So how astonishing it was to see photos of her this week wearing ripped designer jeans and more bling jewellery than Sacha Baron Cohen ever did as satirical rapper Ali G.
Just weeks away from her 71st birthday, it’s a bit late to have a midlife crisis. But that, perhaps, would explain the black toenail polish and the crop-top shirt tied to reveal several inches of bare midriff.
Hats off, of course, to Felicity for keeping in such good shape. In the past, she has basked in the glory of winning rear of The Year and has admitted using Botox.
And it’s true that she m may be 70, but looks 30 f from behind.
Yet isn’t there something a bit sad about a woman in her golden years wearing ralph Lauren’s punk Patch Detail Boyfriend jeans ( (£199 a pair)?
How many others would h have once boasted, like Felicity: ‘I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I’m 70, like my mother did.’
Flirting with disaster, I w would suggest.
T The world is full of older women who continue to looko magnificent post-60. H Helen Mirren, 72, can kn knock any young starlet off the red carpet with her demure glamour. Model Christie Brinkley, 63, and actresses Mary Steenburgen, 64, and Meryl Streep, 68, are all magnificent and stylish women.
What we can learn from such women is that you can be gorgeous while still dressing your age.
This doesn’t mean shapeless sackcloths and orthopaedic shoes — just not ripped jeans more suited to your teenage grandchildren.
There is a well-known theory that the happier a woman is with her life, the less she feels the need to be something she’s not.
Yours is a good life, Felicity. You look wonderful naturally — without a croptop and teenage-wannabe jeans.