The age cage #1

Preparing for the IA London shoot

How important is age?
From the number of articles discussing age which one comes across every day, it would seem that age is very important. The emphasis on youth and the ageism that seems to pervade the fashion industry: these are being constantly debated.
There is no way around it, age matters.
Age has acquired greater visibility than it ever did and though this is not a bad thing at all - let's talk about age, why not, and let's represent older people in the media - more worryingly it has also turned into an excellent money-making proposition.  From books full of exhortations to defy style rules and follow one's inklings of what a personal style is, subtly recycling, excuse the pun, age-old advice, to encouraging older women, in particular, to be eccentrically dressed, to apps for mature dating, to the grey-hair-dont-care movement and its spinoffs: you can take your pick. I shall return to this in a different post, as in my view what is really lacking here is a proper intersectional approach to age. We all age but ageing does not make us equal. Some of us can afford to age better than others.
I recently did a shoot for IA London, the designer for whom I walked at LFW19. It has been published by Huf Magazine, issue 86, out this week.  It was quite an experience for me, different from more commercial takes on age.  I was able to render, visually, through movement and with the help of the magnificent clothes designed by Ira, the idea that age is indeed a cage. By that, I particularly mean the negativity attached to age and the ageing process and all its contemporary accoutrements.

A preview of the article in Huf Magazine

It was actually refreshing for me when I went again to the Dior exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum to find on display an old magazine of the 1950s, possibly Woman's Illustrated, for which Dior had penned an article on style. I did not make a note of what issue it was (I will do so when I go there again), but I took some photos.

What did the great couturier say?
There are no old women, only women who accept old age: being old or being too old for anything is really all in the mind. His concluding paragraph is also rather contemporary: everything you see in fashion magazines is good for you.

My point precisely, as I wrote in an earlier post. Clothes are neither pro-age nor anti-age. It is up to the individual to create a style that suits her/him. And you do not need anyone to tell you what goes or does not go. There is agency in styling, only you know how to style yourself.
Other things Dior wrote in that article are not so consonant with the our contemporary times. But those two lines:  they are indeed words of wisdom.


*  Dior : Designer of Dreams continues until 1st September 2019. It is sadly sold out.