Hi everyone, came back from a trip to a recording of Channel 4’s Fabulous Fashonistas, a documentary on 6 older women who dress with style and pizazz – did you see it?  Wow, so good to see Brits dressed up in a similar manner to the women I see on Ari Seth Cohen’s blog.  Invisible Woman, a Guardian fashion blogger, has written a good comment piece on it and I too have my thoughts!

With an average age of 80 plus these were women with flair and panache.  Ok, a couple of them were a trifle over the top in their dress, but did you note that one of  the women shopped in charity shops – yessss!!  And they were so creative. This is what I am interested in – I believe that the older you get the more creative you can become with clothes.  Did I wear frou-frou skirts when I was working?  No, I wore business suits and sensible skirts and tops.  And then, always, jeans for the weekend.  So, when you retire do you wear jeans all the time?  I did for a bit and then thought, now wait a minute, what else am I going to wear?  Hence, my drift towards the frothy skirt and sharp jacket.

By the way, I kind of regret my blog title frugal fashion shopper as fashion itself is ridiculous – see Hadley Freeman’s take on it.  No, what you want is a style, a style you are comfortable with, but a style over and above the ordinary, and I do mean that.   Personally, I am not going to blend in as I age!  And these women had style in buckets.  What I take away from the documentary is that I am going to be in my style (frothy skirts etc…) more often and not keep them in my wardrobe for best.

However, like Invisible Woman one thing in the documentary I was disappointed with was the reaction of the advertising agents, and Vogue, to one of the women (Bridget) and her aim to become a model.  (By the way, one of the 6 women, who is in her late eighties, is a model already.)  Bridget’s aim, though, is to campaign and draw attention to the lack of older women in glossy magazines.   One remark to her I found particularly grating, that advertisers, if they want older women at all, want ‘the granny in her slippers’.  Excuse me!  You watch out, is what I say to that.  I am part of the baby boomers demographic and we are going to be a lot more demanding than older people have been in the past – and I’m with Bridget, we need to campaign hard for a different approach, particularly in the world of advertising and the high-end glossies.  I’ll say more about this in another blog.

In the meantime, here is a skirt I pulled out of my wardrobe yesterday and wore around my town instead of jeans.  The skirt has three integral petticoats so puffs out at the hemline and was £6.99 at my local Oxfam!

With love

Penny

The frugal fashion shopper