Yes, we can!
Be inspired by these women who wouldn’t let anything hold them back
‘I became an Instagram star in my 60s’
Suzi Grant, 68, from Brighton, proves that style has no age limit.
‘When it comes to fashion, I believe the brighter, the better. I love vintage patterns and wear my retro cat-eye sunglasses for any occasion. When I’m out and see another woman around the same age dressed as vibrantly as me, we always smile at each other in solidarity. Age should never be a barrier to looking fabulous.
When I retired at 60 after a long career in television and radio, everyone expected me to slow down. Although that’s what retirement is supposedly for, I was bored. I started looking for things to busy myself with: I went on a script-writing course and started writing a novel, but neither worked for me. Then, my godchildren, Emma and Charlie, suggested I look into blogging, which is writing and taking photos for your own website. I didn’t know anything about it, but I thought I’d give it a go. In 2014, Alternative Ageing was born.
The first step was finding a subject I felt passionate about. I knew a lot about nutrition, so started there. Not long after, I came across Ari Seth Cohen’s book and blog, Advanced Style, which champions fashion for older women. I went to see a documentary of his, and witnessing these women just like me dressed in bright colours, vintage clothes and patterned headscarves changed my life.
I’d always liked bright colours but, as I’d grown older, I’d lost the confidence to wear them. It dawned on me that I’d woken up one day to find that no one looked at me any more. I thought that no woman should feel that way, so I started taking photos of women over 50 I saw on the street for a section of my blog called I Like Your Style. I also started wearing fun clothes and dying my hair pink or orange – I felt great!
DEFYING ‘NORMAL’
I’d heard about Instagram, which is a social media platform where you share photos. I thought it would be a great way to showcase my fashion and food photography, so I set up an account. By this point, my friends and family thought I was going crazy. To them, it wasn’t “normal” for a woman in her 60s to be dressing eccentrically and so active on social media.
But I carried on writing my blog and uploading colourful photos of myself. Then, two years in, someone from Instagram got in touch because they’d come across my page and wanted to interview me for a campaign they were doing called #perfectlyme. That was the moment it all exploded – when the interview went live, my followers tripled overnight, from 3,000 to 9,000 – I was in utter shock!
I never would have dreamed I’d become an Instagram star in my
60s. Since then, I’ve been featured in Italian and Russian magazines as well as UK newspapers. I now have close to 14,000 followers on Instagram, so it’s safe to say I no longer feel invisible!
While blogging has been hard work, it’s worth it because it keeps me young. Every day I get messages from women I’ve never met saying I’ve inspired them to wear red lipstick again or to dress with more colour. Reading these, I couldn’t be prouder because it’s exactly what I look upon as my mission: to encourage women to stay visible and to never stop having fun just because they’re getting older.
People stop me in the street to tell me they love my sunglasses or hair. That never happened before. Life doesn’t end after retirement, because age really is just a number. I may be 68 but it doesn’t mean I can’t have fun!’ • alternativeageing.net
‘With 14,000 followers, it’s safe to say I no longer feel invisible’