What's your sartorial age?

The truth is, it's not always age that matters, it's whether you can personally pull off the look.

Lucy Hyslop, Vancouver Sun

Published: Monday, May 12, 2008

If 60 is the new 40, and 40 the new 20, then is "age-appropriate fashion" just a misnomer?
It's a much-bandied phrase, one that conjures up a raft of rules on how to dress through the years. Look at celebrities, however, and the codes are abandoned as shamelessly as leftover popcorn at the end of a movie.
Take Helen Mirren, for example, who is frequently touted as the classy epitome of someone who knows how to wear clothes that befit her 62 years. Yet the Oscar-winning actress could easily join her more saucy contemporaries, designers Vivienne Westwood and Betsey Johnson, who never shy away from wearing far more outlandish, daring and possibly "age-inappropriate" attires.


"Someone like Iman [David Bowie's 52-year-old model wife] can wear pretty much anything she wants and look amazing. The rest of us need to take stock of our body shape and cover up what needs to be covered up."





The truth is, it's not always age that's the barrier; it's whether you can personally pull off the look. Do you have the chutzpah to carry off whatever strikes your fancy in the sartorial stakes?
We all have friends who belie their ages through their clothes: Mine's 43 years old, wears the oddest combinations but makes them look hot enough to blend in effortlessly with the mid-20 rock crowd.  
So, has the time come when donning a vintage rock T-shirt no longer leaves a person wide open to ridicule? Or is that look on par with that of the aged Rolling Stones - still dressing like a college punk band and leaving some lamenting the loss of the idea of growing old gracefully?
For cultural commentator Sarah Bancroft, who is also editor-in-chief of online fashion source, Vitamin V, when it comes to trendy Ts, it depends on how great your arms are. "If you're cut like Madonna who is about to turn 50," she declares, "then go for it."
If you are a mere mortal (with the usual bat wings, no doubt), she continues, it's probably best to cut off wearing those Ts likely closer to the age of 45.  "It really just depends how much time you spend with your personal trainer," Bancroft adds.
"Someone like Iman [David Bowie's 52-year-old model wife] can wear pretty much anything she wants and look amazing. The rest of us need to take stock of our body shape and cover up what needs to be covered up."
Down at Dadabase on East Broadway (at Main), Ignacio Corral points to his head, saying: "It's all in here. If you feel like you can carry it off, then why not?"
The 40-year-old, who has run and created designs for the popular gallery/clothing store for six years, is dressed today in jeans and a bright T-shirt. But when he goes back to his native Mexico, he finds his friends - who do not look like him - question his style.
"They ask me, what was I thinking and tell me that I look like a teenager," he explains. "But I look at them and I think they look like 60-year-olds."
His main clientele for his range of inventive Ts are in their 40s. "Perhaps if the designs are a little explicit [two ladybugs mating, for example], it's more for the younger artsy crowd," he says.
Melanie Talkington, a leading expert in corsets who has fitted such luminaries as Dita Von Teese, agrees that it has a lot to do with your character. She has many older grandmoms in their 60s buying corsets, although the main age of customers is around 40.
"There are plenty of people who are able to pull off a look - more akin to what a 20- or 30-year-old would normally wear - well into their 60s," the owner of Lace Embrace (on 16th at Main) believes. "Often it's the younger people who are trying to be fashionable and buy things that are trendy but don't really know how to put things together that end up looking like more of a fashion victim."
Of course age-appropriate fashion per se can cut both ways. There are people who dress far too old for their age such as actresses Katie Holmes and Anne Hathaway.
In general, however, Bancroft adds, the proliferation of celebrity stylists has helped sort these issues.  She cites Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Helen Mirren as achieving "the elegant-yet-sexy balance that so many women strive for."
Mariah Carey's attire, however, gets a tongue lashing. "[She] is a glaring example of dressing too young," she says, "she looks like she got dressed at Britney Spears's house."
While on a roll, Bancroft tells the story of seeing a "15-year old girl" with bleach-blond hair, dressed in tight low-rider jeans and a cute little top, at a bar in West Vancouver.
"I wondered if she had fake ID," she continues, "she then turned around and I nearly fell off my seat - she was probably 50 judging by her face. This is going too far."
Special to The Sun