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| I like her age... |
She would never remember me, but I remember Joan Juliet Buck coming through the Glamour art department in my early, 1960s years of working there. She was something of a "wunderkind", a very young woman with a good lineage, good education and a real gift for observation and writing. She went on to many careers including novelist, actress and editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Please enjoy this smart, funny (yes I laughed out loud) and so true piece.
COMING OF AGE*
When I was 30, my necklaces were ironic. The single row of baroque
pearls with the intaglio clasp that I wore along with my grandmother's
double strand were a cheeky nod at Coco Chanel in her late-revival
prime, say, when she was 78 or 80. Now that I'm barreling toward my
mid-60s, the last thing I want to do is remind anyone of Coco Chanel at
78. Instead of being casually brilliant pieces of irony, the pearls now
confer the gravitas of a mother-in-law, while my amber beads from
pre-perestroika Moscow, which used to be a river of golden light, make
me look like I teach poetry part-time while attempting a second career
in hand-thrown pots.
Necklaces age me.
So do black jackets.
So do shoulder pads.
So do earrings. Any earrings.
So, alas, do printed scarves.
So does red lipstick.
So does smoky, sexy eye makeup.
And high heels I can't walk in.
Now that I'm a lady of a certain
age, I have to drop the costumes. Everything that put me in the
Best-Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1987 must be left in 1987, and the
same goes for the Lartigue look of 1972, the dust-colored suits of 1991,
and the rest. Fashion is a time capsule and becomes a time machine that
only the young should enter. "Vintage" from your own closet carries too
many old references. But we get attached to what we wore the day we
fell in love, the day we found our style, the days we looked our best.
I
hang on to the Saint Laurent smoking coatdress that I wore to a lunch
in 1983 because I hadn't slept in my own bed, the Missoni camisole I
wore to a magical dinner at Maxim's in 1974, the Hermès chestnut leather
dress from 1996 that was the coolest thing in the world. But the world
moves on, the Saint Laurent coatdress is a fashion history lesson, the
camisole can't be worn with a bra, and the leather dress is oddly tight.
I haven't gained weight, but things have moved around.
We find
our style in our 20s and hang on to everything that makes up our
look—hair, shoes, colors, shapes—through our 30s and 40s, at style
cruising speed. But somewhere between 50 and 60, there are bumps in the
road. Physical changes, social changes, contextual changes.
The
face changes shape. From the age of 23 onward, I wore a particular
expression in photographs until I saw evidence that the pensive, dreamy,
three-quarter profile had turned grumpy. Now it's full face, with a
smile, and as much light as possible.
When Lauren Hutton gave me
an array of makeup from her line, she said, "We have to do different
things now. Watch my DVD." I told her, a little huffily, that I didn't
need to watch a DVD to know how to put on makeup, but she was adamant,
so I watched and learned, among many secrets, that concealer now goes
under the nostrils. Really? I thought, but it works.
At a certain age, more can be as good as less, but only if used in the right place.
The
body changes. Elegance is refusal, elimination, and pitiless
self-criticism. No matter how many times you salute the sun, the skin on
those fine upper arms will drape toward the crook of the elbow in a
gentle valance that would be a triumph executed in chiffon but is
alarming in human skin.
Then there's that egregious puff of flesh
at the junction of breast and armpit that I call the chicken because it
reminds me of the more depressing cuts offered by Frank Perdue. It pops
out between strap and arm, it makes itself known under a T-shirt, it
wriggles out of armholes, it rises like yeast above a strapless dress.
The
torso does odd things. Alcohol, pasta, cheese, and cookies—the basic
constituents of sex-free fun—cause it to expand forward, which is why
Geoffrey Beene cut his most ladylike dresses with a gather at the
breastbone. Even if the waistline hasn't expanded, what's just below it
begins to resemble a sofa, even if it's only a small part of a very neat
sofa.
The tailored suit belongs in the boardroom, and then only
if you're on the board. The pantsuit looks either so masculine that it
signals a lifestyle choice, or it puts you firmly in human resources at a
midsize Ohio company.
The crop top and the low-cut jeans have to
go. So do the shorts for anything but sports, and the miniskirts. It's
no use re-creating those cocktails on the lawn in the linen shift, or
prom night, or disco dawns sweating to Barry White in tight sheaths, or
pioneer strides in the prairie skirt with the wide belt as firm as a
man's hands. Or those hot afternoons in ragged denim on the wooden steps
of Mike's house somewhere in Florida in the 1970s, what was that place
called?
If you're rich, you donate to charity. If you're famous,
you sell for charity. If you're neither, you call the resale shop. What
now?
The forgiving knitted tunic beckons. Ignore it, especially in
tones called pebble, rock, stone, sand, and heathered versions of each.
Furthermore, the forgiving tunic too often has bat-wing sleeves, which
conjure up the possibility that the arm beneath is exactly the same
shape.
The shawl is another temptation—a swath of softness, a bit
of bravado for the shoulders, you think, forgetting that every
grandmother in every painting since painting began is wearing a shawl.
White crochet is to be feared (in general, white crochet should be
avoided after graduation), but tensely folded black cashmere can make
you look like a Sicilian widow. A shawl draped over the back is granny,
but thrown over one shoulder, it's power.
All colors are good
except maroon, and if you're Caucasian, yellow. Purple, which should be
the color of wisdom, has connotations of witch and madwoman best left
alone. Eccentricity is to the later years what vulgarity is to youth: a
cheap solution.
Whether it's dyed or allowed to fade to the color
of imported French sea salt, the hair on women of a certain age has a
strange texture that requires daily professional blowouts to approximate
the bounce of youth. You try a turban in the mirror at home; you
imagine that it pulls up your features. It actually makes you look like a
fortune-teller, but few will tell you that. I happily wore Middle
Eastern cotton headbands as wide as turbans until hairstylist John
Barrett said, "Good God! You need help," swept me off, and gave me a
sublime renegade-priest cut. When it's growing out, I sneak on the
turban headbands and resume reading palms.
A truly great haircut makes up for the fact that you're not in spike heels.
The
hunt for shoes is as impassioned as ever, only you're looking for a
different kind of shoe. As the fat pad under the feet shrinks, the shock
of bone on leather becomes unbearable in heels. Some designers add
layers to their insoles, but never enough, because it would ruin the
curve of the arch. You discover hitherto-unknown brands of shoes lined
in cork, Tempur-Pedic foam, inner springs, and angel food cake, and you
succumb to comfort, but should you fall for the Velcro-strap Mary Jane,
young women will laugh at you behind your back. Fear Velcro.
Even
comfort follows the rules of fashion. When you find shoes you can stand
in through an entire cocktail party, you must buy them in every color
and multiples of black because the more perfect the shoe, the faster it
will be discontinued. At a dinner, a beautiful Danish woman my age
showed me her shoes; a perfect shape with a good heel, they had a little
zip by the instep. She took one off to show me the name—"No one you
know," she said—but she'd worn them so much that it had vanished.
Last
fall I longed for the Saint Laurent silver boots identical to the gold
ones I had in 1973. Missoni makes me as happy as ever, Uniqlo's
collections by Jil Sander and Inès de la Fressange are beautiful, and I
look forward to what Christophe Lemaire will do there this fall. The
wardrobe now comes down to the essentials: black sweaters, good
trousers, boatneck tunics, and dresses that are cut, shaped, and fitted
to me. A good trench coat, and then a few more good trench coats. I
found a silk one at Pamela Barish's shop in Los Angeles, with pleats in
the back so that it can be worn as a dress, or thrown—the way I used to
throw my pearls—over a plain top and trousers for that abstracted
I-just-got-out-of-bed look that signals cool at any age. It's the ideal
garment, but the one in my size was snapped up by some 30-year-old movie
star, so I'm going to have to wait.
*Originally published in May 2015 Harper's Bazaar
