Dressing to Age You

Theatre, film or television, we can quickly estimate the period a film or play is set in by the costumes. What an astoundingly astute remark is likely not what you are thinking at this moment, but it does have relevance: if we can date a period by the dress, what are we telling the people around us by the way we dress? When I look out of my window at work, I can see people standing at bus stops or crossing a very busy junction, and mostly I can tell their age to within five to ten years by observing their clothes and their hairstyles. The older someone is, the more likely it is they will be wearing fashions from yesteryear, and not because they have to keep their clothes longer than youths but rather because they bought 'fashion' and not 'style'.

Their is a strange dualism as people become older, they defend their older styles by saying that they like wearing what other people of their generation are wearing, and yet when the magazines say that 'orange is in', you can be sure they will be at the head of the queue buying garments in orange. What the magazine pundits say is 'in' is fashion, what suits your figure, colour and wrinklyness is style, and the trick is to find where style and fashion overlap. Yes. Definitely. However, when you read magazines, whether about cars, fashion or gardening, the images if not the words will seduce you through simple repetition. Many people who do not have figures like a stick come to believe that there is something wrong with them only because they are watching a never ending stream of well-dressed sticks, and that is what they get because they continue to buy the magazines that show this. There are enough readers who do not need to see the stick army to change the ways that magazines present their material, but not enough of them have the courage or the know-how to band together and do something. You too can look good, but you might have first to change the world around you before this appreciated.

I am a stick, my wife is a viola, and her mother told her never to trust a thin man. I love the shape of my viola, and I want to find things that I can adorn my viola with so that the stick army and everyone else can see that she is just as beautiful as any stick. Lublin is a terrible place to be a beautiful viola, because you are supposed to be a stick and remain that way or evolve into a roundy shape dressed up with curtains. The largest bra size is a C, and we are told again and again that no one asks for larger sizes, and they are almost right. Almost, because what do they think we were doing if not asking? Big is bad, and if you have D cup breasts or larger you are supposed to strap a C cup bra over them and either squash them onto your stomach or balance them on top so you look like some kind of battle cruiser - and heaven help anyone standing next to you if you turn around to quickly.

But back to the street, and some of the typical people to be found there. Men first, and topping the list is the smiley belt, which most men seem to achieve by the age of 32 and presumably is the result of those beloved pork cutlets in bread crumbs, where the stomach protrudes and the belt curves down and around it. Men are also the most boring dressers once over the age of 28, at which point dress sense becomes disengaged, overwhelmed by the image of the suit. Suits and non-suits can be easily observed at the weekend and when on vaction by their belief that a shirt is cool, especially one designed to be worn with a suit. The ultimate suit, at ages of 40 and above, stands on the beach in long shorts, short sleeved shirt tucked in, short haircut and short socks, the latter in their summer shoes. There is no turning back at this point, the long-term wearing of a suit removes any confidence or ability to wear something cool. One the positive side, the incidence of wearing socks and sandles in Lublin is slowly falling from the high of 90% down to around 50% as young people begin to understand that it is possible for the male biped to bear his feet naked in public.

Another millstone around the neck of the man is the macho image, where macho actually means becoming an unremarkable servant of a small hierachy. Let us take Spanish culture for a moment, possibly the home of the elegant macho image: Spanish men do not wander around the street in a toredo's outfit, and yet the toredo is at a pinnacle of the macho image. Or, that footballer does not wander around the street in a footballer's shirt. Men are suckers for the the fear of being excluded, this fear drowning out common sense, abandoning them to the belief that the real man looks like every other real man. The trouble for me is that I can see their is life beyond the macho, and it is not all about dead looking people in the same uniforms. if we compare our choices with that which women have in comparison - colours and styles in bags and belts and jewelery and underwear as well as the tops, jackets and the rest. The men's section is like a monastery.

Seeing as how the woman's choice is so much greater, let's take a look at what goes wrong on that side of the fashion fence. When you are young and and stick-like, everything is designed for you and as a consequence everything coordinates easily. As you get a older, and your skin loses some of that suppleness you begin to move into that area your less beautiful and less stick-like friends knew all the time, the feeling that you have to hide stuff. What you need is to read a few magazines and listen to your friends and they will soon give you the rules for concealment. You will be saved!

Rule 1: Black conceals - if you have nothing to conceal but your charm or if you stand in a dark place, else all it does is outline your figure perfectly without giving you any definition to soften it. If you feel big, black will make sure you look big. If you have lines or wrinkles, the inability of the eye to focus on that blackness will mean it slides to your face, meaning that your lines will be super visible for want of anything else to look at. Other solid colours fare little better, and should be used more as an accent.

Rule 2: Black goes with anything - as long as what you want it to go with is also black. Black can be highlited by other colours, but rarely the other way round. Black trousers will not make you look younger because younger people generally wear other colours and so anyone in black is more likely to be non-stick or old. This is the trouble with rules, if everyone follows them then people will believe you belong to the group that typically wears whatever it is. Skirt = woman, black trousers = old or large woman.

Rule 3: Jackets should conceal the bum - but a jacket that long will either be fitted and make your legs look short, or will be too large and make you look bigger and shapeless. We call this the 'concealer jacket', because that is what it does not do.

Rule 4: The older you are, the shorter your hair should be - the logic is that short hair makes you look younger, except that younger people generally have longer hair unless they are trying to appear older. Frizzy styles make you look like a poodle, continual dying makes your hair look dead, and that curly style women choose over the age of 50 says just that. The best length is around shoulder length, and the best way to treat your hair is to keep dying products well away from it.

Rule 5: There are shops for the young and shops for the old - this breaks the fashion versus style rule, the shop that has something that suits you could be any shop. Do not let modern music or moody looking shop staff put you off, go in with a smile on your face and prepare yourself to enjoy the experience.

When we see fashion in shops, we often describe it in terms of the people we know who would wear that style, it creates a fun shorthand when out shooping, making it less of an onerous tromp around the shops. And fun is important, although learning to 'come out' and strut your stuff in the changing rooms takes some effort. The more we practice then the more that clothes shops become playgrounds for our imaginations, and hence the greater we can relax and enjoy the expereince. If you can make the shop assistants laugh with you, then your life is being lived.