It's Never Too Late to Look Great! , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Maggie Cox

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100 pages

English

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Description

It's Never Too Late to Look Great! does something the fashion industry is frightened to do. It shows how women over 50 - and beyond - don't have to be invisible when their faces and figures are less than perfect. This style guide shows how to dress with panache, and open the door to a world of new opportunities, confidence and happiness. If you've ever seen some grey hairs in the mirror and said, 'I don't know what to wear any more', this is the book for you. Maggie identifies thefour qualities that make style: Surprise, True to yourself, Artistry and Reinvention.Follow these and you will become a style S.T.A.R.Older women are now fitter and more active than ever. Many of them want to keep looking stylish, but find themselves ignored by a fashionindustry whose public image is often a pouting, skinny 20-year old. Maggie Cox's book is for them. It shows that fun begins at 50 and can lastas long as you want it to.

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	18 janvier 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781789019780
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	6 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Biography

Maggie worked as a newspaper reporter and commercial writer for many years before taking up a second career as owner of dress shops in Broadway and Stow on the Wold. From her home in the Cotswolds she continues to write about fashion, and is passionate about helping older women find their own individual style.

Copyright © 2019 Maggie Cox

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1789019 780

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To friends and colleagues who were so generous with advice, and going in front of my camera. And to my husband, who is still my husband, after endless pestering for technical, computer related, answers.
Contents
GETTING STARTED
1 How it Began
Stepping over Snakes
2 Ugh!
What Doesn’t Work
3 STAR Style
The Big Four

SURPRISE
1 Wow!
Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No, it’s a Hat
2 Colour
The Exploding Paint Box – Under Control
3 Accessories
The Angel is in the Detail

TRUE TO YOURSELF
1 Dress to Your Personality
But Who am I?
2 Athleisure
‘Sporty’ to You and Me
3 Relaxed Glamour
Far from the Hills of Hollywood
4 Funky
How to be Craftfully Crazy
5 The New Classic
We are Women after all
6 Image
Clothes Tell Tales

ARTISTRY
1 Easy on the Eye
Beauty not Bling
2 Be Creative
On with the New and on with the Old
3 Special Occasion Wear
The Gadabout
4 Makeup
Has She, Hasn’t She?

REINVENTION
1 The Wardrobe Edit
Hoard or Sort
2 Attitude
The Awkward Brigade?

FASHION TODAY
1 Too Much Choice
It’s a Riot
2 Everything’s Casual
A Little Bit Undone
3 Unstructured Design
Fit and Flare
4 Designer Classic
Royal Chic Critique

WHERE TO GO
1 The Joy of Shopping
Aladdin’s Cave
2 Independent Shops
Places to Call Our Own

TYING IT ALL UP
1 To Rebel, or Not to Rebel, that is the Question
The Legacy of Diana Vreeland
2 Into the Future
Reasons to be Cheerful

GETTING STARTED
1
How it Began
Stepping over Snakes
You gotta have style.
It helps you get down the stairs.
It helps you get up in the morning.
It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody.
– Diana Vreeland
I was in the Amazonian rainforest preparing to go on a survival course with the Brazilian army, part of a cruise up the Amazon on the Swan Hellenic ship, Minerva . ‘Pull up your socks over your trousers,’ they said. ‘There’re snakes and mosquitoes everywhere.’
I looked over to Judith, one of our ship-board travelling companions. No socks. Pretty trainers and skinny jeans. ‘This is absolutely as far as I go. Flat shoes are bad enough. But socks. No way,’ she protested. Sockless, she marched forward to savour the delights of the jungle. And indeed, we all, including Judith, survived unbitten and unmolested by insect or reptile after two hours in the green, steamy heat of the rainforest.
Judith’s aversion to socks didn’t come as a surprise. Socks aren’t top of the packing list for a woman who is rarely seen in flat shoes. She wears four-inch heels for most occasions. They accentuate her tall, slim figure, and she has a pair for every outfit. She walks like a model, as well she should, because in her pre-Amazonian existence she had strutted the catwalk, as well as qualifying and practising as an architect.

Judith, the inspiration for this book on board her husband’s motor yacht, Vivace

Judith is a woman of style. Now retired, aged 76, she continues to wear beautifully put together outfits for every occasion, whether she’s cooking, entertaining, gardening, partying or crewing their 44-foot motor yacht across the sea from Guernsey where they live. How, I thought, could even a little bit of this style rub off on me?
Although I’ve tried to dress with flair throughout my life, I’ve always been impressed by women who seem to do the style thing as if it was as natural as brushing your teeth. Women who shine with confidence, knowing they look as good as they possibly can. And Judith is one of those women.

Next to Judith my number two idol is Cleopatra. The legendary Egyptian queen seduced Mark Antony, the Roman General, in her mature years. She was not conventionally beautiful but she was bright and charming. She probably spoke several languages, and was a brilliant conversationalist. This set her apart from other women.
As well as her positive attitude towards people and the world in which she lived, she was very aware of the importance of her appearance. For ceremonial events she dressed as the goddess Isis to enhance her authority, and for her coin image she chose to show a strong jaw line like her father. Shakespeare left us the memorable lines:
‘Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.’
How reassuring for us young-at-hearters today. Cleopatra was a mature woman when she seduced Antony in her late thirties (this was old in her time!), not conventionally beautiful, but utterly charming. And of course she dressed in a way that set her apart.
But what about those of us who don’t have good cheekbones like Cleopatra or tall, slim figures like Judith and have never learned to walk like a model? We less-than-perfect mortals, on the top of all this, have wrinkles and lumpy bits to cope with! Can we even get on to the style starting blocks? Yes, I believe we can.

However. We vibrant want-to-be-Judiths have a problem. Fashion culture is about youth. There is little for us over fifties. Style guides target the young, or if not the young, those who with some tweaking of diet, underwear, hair colour or botox, can fit into the young mould. Our culture rejoices in the young. ‘And why not?’ you may ask. In many ways this is wonderful. Young is energetic, attractive, and full of ambition. But this isn’t much help for us more mature women, whose knees are a bit knobbly, who are reluctant to bare too much arm, bosom or thigh and who can’t necessarily cinch our waists or squeeze into skinnies.
Mainstream fashion designs aim to be sexy, eccentric, brightly patterned, coy, even childish, with frayed edges and crazy silhouettes. We see young, pouting models in top magazines who look as if they need, but are banned from having, a good meal. Their clothes are often obscured by the noir, sexy image the photographer wants, and you know the frustration of seeing what you think is a great dress, but the image only shows the back – and in moody shadow. Seventy-year-old models do appear occasionally on the catwalk. But these are exceptions, and older women still face barriers in getting jobs, being authority figures – and catching the waiter’s eye!
The emphasis on youthful clothes is part of a wider culture that undervalues the old, and particularly older women. If we’re not careful we become invisible – and this despite the fact that there’re 12 million of us in the UK over the age of fifty, we spend £350 billion a year – and we’re more healthy and active than ever before. And we do not want invisibility.
We want, and need, to stay a part of the modern world. We want the gravitas of a well-paid job or the freedom to freelance and pick and choose, but above all, we want to take part in life, to be consulted, to work, to play, to enjoy. And to wear eye-catching, flattering clothes that bring us out of the shadows – not only a joy in itself, but, as you’ll find out, has lots of benefits for our well-being and self-confidence.
So let’s throw open our wardrobe doors – and tell our clothes they had better watch out. New rivals will be on the way if they don’t come up to scratch. We can’t compete with the giraffe-necked nineteen-year-old, but we can reinvent ourselves with clothes that flatter and make us stand out from the crowd.

But where to find new and exciting clothes? We read magazines, newspapers, see what the celebrities are wearing and just get confused. Advice is contradictory. Trends appear, are then rubbished. New ideas, new shapes, new colours, new directions come and go in a flash. Black is in. Black is out. Brown is the new black. Grey is the new black. Match your bag to your shoes. Never match your bag to your shoes. Skinny jeans are in. Bootleg is coming back, maybe. Pastels, yes, no. Brights, yes, no. Tight frocks are hot, not hot.
The clothes displayed in shops, catalogues and internet sites promise instant transformation. ‘Wear me and you’ll be on trend,’ they say. But we of the older generation can’t do this. We can’t put on the latest fashion garment and look good, let alon