Are you a FLOWSER like me? That is a Fashion Loving, Older Woman who is Socially and Environmentally Responsible? And how difficult that can be!
The Deputy Editor writes in July's Vogue of reaching her 40th birthday and concerns about her wardrobe. While I admire her decision to continue wearing the mini-skirts she loves, the article did raise my hackles! Partly because she can afford to spend more on one item (such as a Miu Miu skirt at £420) than I can probably spend in a whole year, but also because she's only forty for goodness sake - what does she think it is like at 50?!
There appears to be a gap in the market - I and friends of my age don't like the increasingly frumpy offers from M&S or BHS, but while we adore some of Topshop's clothes don't want to feel we might be accused of looking like the clichéd 'mutton dressed as lamb'. And actually the hemlines are a bit short for us! Plus how do you cope with a body shape that seems to differ from day to day, let alone month to month - and certainly isn't a 'standard size' anything?
By our age we are also aware of the wider implications of the clothes we wear - a media industry that encourages even young children to look like sex symbols, feeds teenage neurosis with the associated risks of anorexia and bulimia and the whole fashion world that creates fast, cheap fashion resulting in horrendous industrial accidents such as Rana Plaza. Not to mention what we are doing to the planet using up oil resources to make textiles and dumping tons of clothes into landfill or onto developing countries, thereby wrecking their own textile industries, in the supposed name of 'aid'.
Having been studying for the last two years for a Foundation Degree in Fashion and Textile Design - which has been a wonderful creative experience, and my classmates have been super at welcoming this 'older woman' as part of the class - I had wondered about writing a blog for people like me. Well, Emily Sheffield, your article in Vogue has pushed me into actually doing it!
