If you’re in your forties, I’m sure you can look back to all your fashion themes. There was likely a retro and thrift clothing stage, perhaps a beach-bunny period, a utilitarian mommy time, and now.
What is now, for you? By the time you reach forty, you should have a fair idea of what your style actually is, instead of looking to trends for answers. For me (and this is my style, I’m not advocating it for anyone else), minimalist clothing in lots of denim and black, strategic bits of leather here and there, some flats, Jack Purcells and biker boots, and some military pieces all fit my everyday attire. And every time I deviate from it, I’m sorry.
Take, for instance, my most recent shopping excursion. I decided that, given that I have two weddings to attend in the next six months, a new cocktail-ish dress was in order. I went to Diane von Furstenberg, figuring that the price point (fairly reasonable) and the choices (versatile) fit the occasions. But what I came home with was a style departure.
It’s not that anything was wrong with the dress. A tight, black, fairly severe piece, it evoked ladies who lunch and Victoria Beckham (in her current classier incarnation, not Posh Spice). It looked good on me. But when I got it home and tried it on, I realized that I had been playing dress up in the store. I should have just tottered around in it then and there, gotten it out of my system, realized that there was no way I could wear any undergarments underneath it, and then gone with a better choice. Instead, I had to have my nine-year-old daughter tell me the dress didn’t work, haul the thing back to the store, and exchange it for what fits my style perfectly: an army green silk shirt wrap dress. Lesson learned.
I have friends who definitely have a wider style range than I. One good friend dresses like Anthropologie’s best customer, except her style is real and garnered from her life experience. In a week’s time, I might see her combine preppy, hippie, ethnic, and modernist elements into outfits that look perfectly fantastic on her. I stress the “on her” part, because if anyone else I know tried to pull this off, they’d look absolutely absurd. The fact that this friend is an artist only adds to her funky fashion cred.
