Carmen’s Team Pick:
I am totally and completely devoted to getting better with age. After all, if The Golden Girls and Iris Apfel have taught me anything about life, it’s that being older really just means nearing perfection. And if anything proves it, it’s Advanced Style.
Advanced Style began as a photography-based fashion blog, although it will soon live on as a book and film. Started by Ari Seth Cohen, it showcases the outfits of of older ladies and gents in a format reminiscent of The Sartorialist, Lookbook and Facehunter, and provides ample evidence that with great age comes great style.
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What I love about Advanced Style is the personality. As an avid worshipper of older women, I took care to watch each of the featured videos and read through the style advice published on the website. Cohen keeps the focus on his subjects by allowing them to use Advanced Style as a personal platform for discussing fashion and style, and so each video and advice snippet is truly coming from the mouths of fabulous elders from across the globe. The personalities featured on the website are glamorous, charming, and entertaining, and their advice is timeless.
Take, for example, the photo column of Countess of Glamour, Lynn Dell, who also has her own talk show and “dresses for the theater of life.”
Or “Meows by Mary,” the blog column for snippits of style advice:
Finally, ask yourself, “If my worst enemy saw me what could she howl and meow about”, and then take away her temptation to hiss and scratch at your expense.
Advanced Style is also taking on an important and missing piece of our fashion conversation. Too often, Hollywood and the fashion industry disregard the experiences and contributions of older adults. Advanced Style confronts their silence and fills it with wit, fabulosity, and grace. No longer can the experiences of the elderly be packaged as boring, slow-paced, and undesirable. Advanced Style proves that every stage of life is filled with vibrance.
To be honest I’d just like to be an old woman as soon as possible. But in the meantime, I’ll just work on developing my style.
Yes!! Advantaged Style is one of my favourite blogs and Autostraddle is one of my favourite websites and now I am one happy camper. Also, you’re both called AS. Coincidence? I think not.
I love Advanced Style because it does so much to counteract the depressingly pervasive notion that women become frumpy and matronly as they age, while men can be distinguished and also sexy. These ladies prove that growing older doesn’t have to mean sensible cardigans. Growing older can mean growing fucking fabulous.
My first and truest Advanced Style love is a newsreader named Lee Lin Chin. Any Aussies out there to back me up?
Aghghghg, ‘Advanced Style’ not ‘Advantaged Style’, I promise I’m not trying to start a discussion about the intersection of privilege and fashion :p
Love this! I hope to have half as much style as them when I’m that age.
These ladies are gorgeous, especially that second picture! I’m looking forward to being old as more of a time when I don’t have to care and wear huge comfy sweaters (i.e. embrace my inner cat lady) but maybe in five decades or so I’ll be able to have the confidence to pull off leopard printed glasses?
These ladies are cooler in their eighties than I am now, or will ever be.
They even have killer names!
Tziporah, Zelda
I can’t compete with this.
Oh my! I thought I was the only one who is thriled about getting older. I even add an extra year to my age. “Suprise you’re not 40, you’re 39!” Another reason to celebrate!
The Advanced Style videos are awesome! My Oma should be in them. As a European-Asian she has the perfect style mixture of Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Anna May Wong. I’ve always had this awkward fashion sense. But now, as I get older I feel I’m beginning to emulate my Oma… actually, all my grandmothers.
Damn, I’m going to be the best looking woman at BINGO!!!
love advanced style!
i’m planning to be awesome and completely weird as an older lady.
i can’t wait to have that wisdom, but i have to.
Advanced Style honestly makes me look forward to getting old. It’s my favorite fashion blog, along with http://www.dykeduds.com/.
Also, the guy who runs Advanced Style is adorable and I just want to hug him.
Sorry, rather unrelated, but I’m just wondering, will there be a post about the Argentinian bill?
this is great
ah this is amazing
It’s refreshing to hear an optimistic take on ageing. This was fabulous. Thank you, Carmen!
I want this to be my future!
Amazing. I want to go shopping with these women!
I am now happily and energetically rethinking my recent decision to re-think my wardrobe focusing on a “more mature” look so people will take me seriously as a real live adult :)
Oh the beautiful wisdom of these women :)
I love Advanced Style. When I grow up I want to be that woman who wears all the bangles all the time.
Wow, those ladies are fabulous. I think lately I’ve been having a mini-mini-crisis of wondering what’s going to happen in the future for me, especially studying a degree that ties into an industry that can be hugely focused on people’s appearances, especially women’s (the music industry).
However, this has encouraged me to remain fabulous and that this is entirely possible.
I also have this theory though, that many from 20-30 something generation (or younger) will be quite deliberately fabulous and/or borderline outrageous once we’re older, simply because we have grown up amidst the likes of Lady Gaga and Facebook and 15 minutes of fame and a celebration of the idea of being individual and individually special. I think our Gophers will have fins and flames on the sides and we’ll have white mohawks and blinged out walking sticks and shit. Just saying.