6 spring trends that will take years off you
and three guaranteed to make you look older
Perhaps because my mum has always enjoyed fashion — and still does at 82 — I’ve always understood the transformative power of clothes.
But not everyone in midlife feels the same way. It’s not that women stop loving fashion as they age but, rather, they get ‘the fear’.
Nothing is more shaming after the age of 40 than to be accused of ‘trying to be trendy’; no comparison more mortifying than that with ab Fab’s edina.
The trouble is, in our attempts to avoid looking tryhard, we often inadvertently age ourselves.
We (mistakenly) believe that if we stop updating our wardrobes, we will freeze time and remain forever young. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you stopped updating your wardrobe in 1998, you will not look 30 again, you will look like someone who lost interest two decades ago. Few things are more ageing.
We hear the cry time and time again that middle-aged women feel invisible. Too often, this is because we are actively trying to blend into the background. anxious not to be the proverbial mutton, we veer towards the far-too-conservative.
as many a stylish middle-aged woman has observed, you have the capacity to learn for your entire life — so why not about clothes?
You may have developed something of a ‘uniform’ over the years (a useful thing, in fact), but that still needs tweaking and updating.
You don’t stop being interested in new books or films or art when you turn 40, so why should you stop caring about style?
Then there’s the sheer joy of the thing. What can be more invigorating than the purchase of a real
wardrobe-changer? There’s no age-limit on that feeling. Though this is not to say all fashion trends should be taken up.
I’m not suggesting you scoop the latest shorts suit, dive headlong into feathers or pile on the ruffles (see the box, below right, for why). What I am urging is that you don’t turn away from fashion’s power to rejuvenate.
That you take a moment to remember there is no such powerful antidote to feeling invisible than feeling sartorially relevant.
It may only be a little tweak, a focus on detail, an update of colour palette, but the effects are huge. Here’s how to defy age through fashion, starting with the six big trends you may be tempted to ignore, but shouldn’t . . .