Style

Senior style blogger slams ‘insane’ fashion rules for over 60s

Dec 08, 2017

Fashion bloggers insist style is 'ageless'.

Dressing in a new favourite outfit can make you feel happy and confident – but should your clothes follow a certain set of rules depending on your age?

A senior style blogger has insisted there should be no guidelines surrounding how women dress – at any age.

Retired Playboy Bunny, model and make-up artist Dorrie Jacobson, 82, runs blog and fashion site Senior Style Bible, and insists: “Beauty is ageless when worn with an air of confidence.”

While there are endless articles and style guides online and in print, Dorrie has spoken out to encourage women at any age to throw the rule book out the window, and make their own.

Addressing articles that suggest “women of a certain age” should dress in an “age appropriate” way, Dorrie slammed the guides as “condescending and ageist”.

“Suddenly, without warning, we are on the receiving end of a barrage of unsolicited advice about what we can, and cannot wear,” she wrote.

“Who started this insanity, and how do we make it stop? This idea that fashion is only for the young and hip is absurd.”

While Dorrie agrees that some trends should be left to younger generations, she insists any fashion trend can be styled to fit any age.

“The wonderful thing about fashion is the multitude of ways it can be worn and interpreted,” she added.

“Just because we’re older, doesn’t mean we have to disappear into the background in boring, sensible, nondescript clothing.”

She went on to encourage women to speak out against “the ingrained ageism” in the fashion industry, and said: “We’ll shop where we like, and wear what we want.”

Dorrie is joined by an ever-growing number of over 60s fashion bloggers who insist style is ageless.

Australian author Vicki Archer writes on her site: “We are so much more visible to ourselves once we reach a certain age. Feeling invisible in public ways has grown my self-confidence and allowed me to be the woman I am. The focus is on the internals and not the externals; yes, I care about how I am perceived by others but it is more for my benefit.”

While Accidental Icon‘s Lyn Slater, 64, writes: I started Accidental Icon because I was having trouble finding a fashion blog or magazine that offered an urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic but also spoke to women who live what I call ‘interesting but ordinary lives’ in cities.

“Women (like me) who are not famous or celebrities but are smart, creative, fashion forward, fit, thoughtful, engaged, related and most importantly clear and comfortable with who they are.”

And Not Dead Yet Style‘s Patti Gibbons says on her website: “I am a sixty-something woman, wife, professional, auntie and crazy cat lady. We’re not dead yet, so let’s enjoy every sandwich and gild the lilies.”