Dressing their age? Bah!
Seniors who show devil-may-care flair are photographer Ari Seth Cohen’s focus
Is being older still the new black? It appears that way as fashion and beauty companies continue to tap women of a certain age to star in brand promotions. Sixty-nine-year-old Susan Sarandon is a brand ambassador for L’Oréal Paris, while 70-year-old Bette Midler mugs in the spring Marc Jacobs campaign. They join a list of older women featured in brand campaigns: 81-year-old Joan Didion sat for a Céline ad in 2015, 65-year-old Pat Cleveland appeared in a 2015 Barneys New York campaign and 94-year-old Iris Apfel posed last year for Kate Spade and Alexis Bitter ads and was the subject of a recent exhibition at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche department store in Paris.
That's where Ari Seth Cohen, who photographs flamboyant 60plus-year-olds on global streets for his blog Advanced Style (as well as for a 2012 book and 2014 film of the same title), comes in. He's often credited with inspiring an antiageism movement in fashion. British department store chain Selfridges collaborated with Cohen on a 2010 “forever shop” dedicated to timeless style, and in 2012, Marc Jacobs credited Cohen's blog as an inspiration for his fall collection. Since then, senior It girls have been fronting major brand campaigns.
After seven years in New York, Cohen moved to L.A. in July 2015. His second book, “Advanced Style: Older and Wiser” (powerHouse Books, 272 pps., $35), which includes about 20 stylish L.A. seniors, arrived last week. (Cohen and several subjects from the book will appear Wednesday at a Book Soup signing in West Hollywood.)
Art of dressing
Like his subjects, the 34-yearold San Diego native dresses with devil-may-care confidence. He ambles up a Los Feliz sidewalk in double leopard prints (a coat layered over a tuxedo jacket), Maison Margiela tuxedo pants, Gucci horsebit loafers, his grandmother’s buckle-style engagement ring, along with oversize turquoise rings, a bowshaped bolo tie and bold gold glasses by L.A. Eyeworks. The majority of Cohen’s look consists of finds cobbled together from his favorite L.A. thrift shops, Squaresville and Paper Moon Vintage.
“I really love a personal sense of style,” he says. “I think that’s what the [people] I photograph have in common. Making fashion fun. The joy of dressing in an artful way. And because they were born at a certain time, they’re used to things being a little more original. There wasn’t this mass-produced look of everyone having the same outfit.”
Seventy-five-year-old artist and philanthropist Valerie von Sobel, who graces the new book’s cover in a structural Céline dress and ethereal hat by local designer Aliona Kononova, agrees.
“Ari’s interest is in women who are vital and who don’t fade into the sunset willingly,” says Von Sobel, who lives in West Hollywood. “They tend to be colorful ladies with hundreds of bracelets and Bakelite jewelry who are vibrant and very noticeable. They are not about being chic at all. I am not either. I am more about unusualness, a take-noprisoners, quirky kind of style. To me, fashion is not frivolous. It keeps creativity alive, in the designer and in the wearer. It speaks of you before you open your mouth.”
Senior inf luences
Cohen attributes a close affinity to his grandparents for his focus on the senior set.
“My [paternal] grandmother, Helen, was a style icon in San Diego. Everyone thought she was a movie star,” he says. “And Bluma [his maternal grandmother] was a [retired] librarian, who was a second mother to me. So the way I thought about aging was based on this incredible woman, who was my best friend. She taught me about art and fashion and encouraged me to move to New York because she had gone to Columbia University.”
Another early inspiration was the fuchsia-haired British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, 75, who lives part-time in Del Mar. And another? His immaculately dressed paternal grandfather, Hal, nicknamed “Mr. Perfect,” who had an affinity for cashmere sweaters, argyle socks and Italian brands such as Brioni. In high school Cohen often wore 1950s hats, shirts and jackets from his maternal grandfather Jacob Levine. While Cohen’s first book featured only women, 41 men are also showcased in “Older and Wiser.”
Aging redef ined
Cohen began photographing stylish older people in 2008 when he borrowed his roommate’s camera after meeting the late actress Mimi Weddell, then 93, and other swank New York women in their 60s and older who were “painting the town.”
“I wondered why these weren’t the women we were looking to for inspiration, wisdom, style advice, life advice,” Cohen says. “You look at magazines and television, and [the focus] is on really young girls who haven’t even fully formed their style yet.… When aging comes up, it’s all about anti-aging. There’s a prevailing idea that aging is all about decline. It’s all negative, and there’s so much fear around it. It’s so important to fight ageism. We’re all going to get old.
“One woman told me, ‘Never retire. Just retread your tires.’ I thought that was great. Reinvent yourself. Always have something to do. Women in their 80s and 90s tell me they wake up every day feeling grateful, so they make the most of their time.”
And what's next for Cohen? He says he's working on a series of videos about “advanced love” that feature older couples.