Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
There are few arenas where age can be crueller to a woman than fashion.
There you are, a hip, happening girl who knows instinctively how to dress: how to please yourself, how to seduce a man, how to impress your employers, how to show off your cool credentials.
Good taste and logic may desert you at times, but there is no look that you cannot attempt within reason. You are guided by your figure and controlled by your wallet.
But then with age these two confining factors are joined by an ever-growing list of physical inconveniences.
These start off as slight changes, such as greying hair (I am surpassed by no one in my undying gratitude for hair dye) and a thickening waist (work that gym membership) and soon you find yourself wondering whether perhaps those necklaces that your teachers used to hang their glasses on weren’t such a bad idea after all. (They were. Do you know anyone – whatever age – who wants to look like their headmistress?).
But worse is to come, with the onset of creeping fashion paralysis. When I was 30, I didn’t have to read a fashion magazine to know what I wanted to wear: that knowledge was in the water supply.
But with age this instinct fades and takes with it that insouciant confidence that I now observe in younger women as they sashay into the room just knowing they’ve got it right. And I know I am not alone.
At our magazine, we frequently get letters from readers who feel they have lost all sense of what they should be wearing and are desperately seeking help.
Sad as I am to admit it, I now aim simply not to make a fool of myself with clothes. Instead of advising other people where to shop or which label to chase, I occasionally, mortifyingly, find myself approaching total strangers in the street to ask where they found that beautiful yellow dress.
I have no idea why this instinctive knowledge begins to fail us; maybe fashion antennae just shrivel with age.
And although thousands of older women complain that there is nothing for them out there, actually the fashion industry is waking up to the power of the baby boomer wad.
Golden rules for over-50s
Dress appropriately. Dressing young will not make you look young. Every season there are looks that work for you and others that most certainly will not.
This season, for instance, avoid the pastoral, the ultra feminine and – like every season – the very short. In fact, dressing classically looks better as time marches on. The immaculate Anna Ford has always believed in buying a few expensive classics and she is still wearing them now. More often than not she is the best- dressed woman in the room.
Maintenance is a top priority
Getting your hair cut well and often, keeping your nails well looked after and your skin well cared for, cease to be luxuries: they become essential.
I am not suggesting that we all start rising at dawn to do a daily maintenance drill but the path between looking good and looking terrible becomes increasingly narrow with time.
In her witty, observant book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron says: “At 60 you have to spend at least eight hours a week on maintenance – just to keep you from looking like someone who no longer cares.”
Of course, she is American so we can probably halve that. Ephron also points out something else about hair: “You no longer have to wash it every day.”
She claims there is a correlation between how often we are having sex and hair- washing. Go figure.
Keep it simple
Adornment looks gorgeous on sexy young things but with age it complicates matters dangerously.
Avoid anything that looks as if it belongs in a dressing-up chest. It is surprisingly easy to end up looking like the fortune teller at the fair if you pile on scarves and jewellery on top of anything beaded or frilled, particularly with a long skirt.
In fact, frills and all extreme versions of feminity can look very silly. Caroline Neville has been a PR for 40 years and is president of Cosmetic Executive Women.
She needs to look boardroom-good during her working time. “Less is more in my book,” she says. “And once you know your style, stick to it. You will occasionally go mad and buy something completely out of your style, but I have found that these pieces rarely work as I don’t feel comfortable in them.”
Go for a defined shape
It doesn’t matter what fashion says, a good trouser suit is stylish, hard-wearing and you can dress it up and down, with flats for day and heels for evening.
It can be kept modern and of the moment with pieces of jewellery, coloured shirts and T-shirts. Meanwhile, Neville is a great fan of a shift dress. “They never go out of fashion and you can wear them in so many different ways.”
You’re never too old for a fabulous shoe
Beware of showing too much skin. Be it decolletage, too much arm, and yes, short skirts. Remember we’re talking appropriate here.
Think of when you spy a lovely looking girl with great legs and a short skirt from behind, but when she turns around, it would appear she could have heard the Beatles play live: the shock to the beholder is too great.
Skirts need to be on the knee. Arms do not improve with age and suddenly sleeveless becomes scary. If your skin is beginning to be crepey around the decolletage, hide it.
Get your hands fixed
Age spots can be lasered off and hand-plumping with restylane is becoming increasingly popular. Your hands can cruelly give the game away.
Invest in your worst feature
Neville says: “Be it hair or big thighs that need more expensive trousers that are lined and cut well across the tummy.”
