Does Age Effect Style?

I am in complete admittance of being at a stage where in four months’ time there will lay fifteen candles upon my birthday cake, despite being scared of growing older my biggest concern at the moment is the fact that I am practically half way to turning thirty. Now the majority of my viewers (I hope) will be close to this age therefore probably thinking that I am lucky to still be in my teens whereas others may currently be in the same stage of being an adolescent and only just understanding your true self. Anyway, I believe that whether or not age effects the clothes you wear can be quite a controversial topic. In my opinion, it does because a 50th wedding anniversary party isn’t usually filled with attendees attiring mini-skirts unlike that of an eighteen year old’s birthday bash.

Firstly, I find myself repeatedly talking about modern day technology however we all have to agree that it is a major factor of trends being set. Now by this I mean social media. Having a target audience of teens to about fifty year olds, there are only so many elders sat in care homes checking up their Facebook… on an IPad. So the fashion we see on these sites is created to correspond with the reads therefore those standard yarn ‘granny cardis’ are deliberately pushed aside and instead our Instagram feeds receive infinite images of Superga trainers and what the general public call ‘kimonos’ even though they’re not kimonos, just fringed jackets. 

Secondly is advertising, Chanel’s latest ad for Coco Mademoiselle sees the 29 year old Kiera Knightley playing a seductive ‘carefree women’ in a monochrome Chanel-all-over-it party of sophistication involving no hint of anything thirty years or over. Even the (I hate to say it) frail 81 year old Karl Largerfeld couldn’t resist the intention of attracting a 20 something audience, although I think that Chanel has an extremely extensive range of viewers through its range of products (make-up, furniture and clothing). Thus, elders aren’t attracted to smart-phone-filled adverts with celebrities they’ve never heard of, their more drawn to real women wearing the clothes (the M&S adverts being an evident example) or a middle-aged man snuggling puppies whilst enthusing about the latest life insurance dealer. It may be difficult to accept, but designers don’t want these people wearing their clothing, they’d rather have an enticing young icon like Alexa Chung strolling through London clutching the label’s metallic purse. 

Another frequent association with dressing too young for your age is miniskirts. We must all come to the agreement that when you throw on a mini-skirt, chances are you’re not looking for glances of people thinking how chic you look, on the other hand your being a free bit of eye candy. For example, it fairly obvious on a first date to differentiate what a women wants just by regarding whether she is wearing a secluded blouse with boot cut trousers or some hot pink vest top and a pair of skorts. Moreover, when dating young, people will by fact, get together and then be over within 3-9 months whereas when older women look for love, their direction is for finding a permanent relationship with other people similar to them therefore won’t need to make as much of an effort.

Overall, the celebrity whose fashion sense I most deem to be way out of their age range is Madonna’s. The gothic black fish nets and Marilyn Monroe replicas where all acceptable until she turned 40 where, we all expected it to stop but instead it continued on. Loud and proud, she was seen at the Met Gala with a black bob wig along with that ghastly tartan body suit and let’s all shudder as I harshly reminisce about her retake of fish nets on not only the arms, but the chest, ugh. And when you thought that it couldn’t get any worse, she had to sneak on some hot pink point stilettos. Yes, you could think that this is one of those chic street-style outfits that looks trendy because it doesn’t match, but this certain ensemble is an outfit that doesn’t match in the negative form.

Without a doubt, there will be several readers, maybe you, who ultimately disagree with this entire post and my personal opinion and that’s your decision of which I fully respect. Though you definitely won’t find me sat beside my birthday cake upon where 70 candles are lay still wearing this florescent jacquard skirt. Actually, maybe you might because trends change and while we all continue to go to the moon and back just to be viewed as a high-class individual after purchasing an £1,000 Marni blouse, most older women don’t bother because they may have an effortless outlook to style that we all desire nonetheless are too scared to achieve thanks to the media. Don’t think that I am careless in regards to fashion just understand that we all must acknowledge the fact that looking as good as you did today didn’t only take a single glance in your wardrobe.