Golden Girls: Mature couture

Ideas about old age are shifting. Preconceptions about traditional life stages and career paths, not to mention how the aged should look, are no longer valid.

Science is extending lifespans up to 150 years. Advances like regenerative medicines, gene therapy and organ printing mean that the older generation is younger for longer and shouldn't be ignored by marketers.

Older people are starting to live a plural lifestyle - supposedly retired, but not. Elderly ''baby boomers" are reluctant to surrender economic power. They form one of the fastest-growing age groups in the American workforce .

Individuals over 65, and sometimes 75, have growing disposable incomes, which manufacturers, marketers and product developers have yet to take advantage of.

Blogger Ari Seth Cohen first spotted this trend in 2007 . He was looking for stylish and fashionable older women to post on his blog, Advanced Style . It has since had more than 800 000 hits.

''From a style point of view I find them more interesting because they are of an age where they don't have to impress anyone," says Cohen, whose hardcover book was published in 2012. His documentary,Advanced Style, was released in May this year.

According to Cohen, Advanced Style offers proof from the wise and silver-haired that "personal style advances with age".

The blog has turned a few older women into fashion icons, like frequently featured Zelda Kaplan, who died at 95 in the front row at a New York Fashion Week show .

Often photographed and featured on Cohen's blog, Iris Apfel, 92, still consults and lectures about style. She was listed as one of the 50 best dressed over-50s by The Guardian newspaper last year .

About ageing gracefully Apfel says: ''You don't have to look like an old fuddy-duddy, but Chanel said, 'Nothing makes a woman look so old as trying desperately hard to look young'."

Ageing women like designers Vivienne Westwood and Betsey Johnson, and US model and actress Carmen Dell'Orefice, are staying in the style limelight.

Dell'Orefice is the oldest working model in the world. At 84 she's been modelling for 65 years and still poses for some of the largest fashion houses.

Her last 20 years have been her busiest. She is not only changing perceptions of beauty by appearing on runways, in editorials and advertisements, she's also become iconic in the world of plastic: the Tonner Doll Company released the Carmen Dell'Orefice doll. It sold out in five days.

Men are also adopting the trend. The Fashion Grandpa's Instagram account focuses on men aged 70 and up, and Scott Schuman, The Satorialist, often photographs stylish "silverbacks" at fashion weeks.

Style icons abound, like 54-year-old fashion businessman Nickelson Wooster and his Italian counterpart, Gianluca Vacchi, 47, who runs his own company and lifestyle site.

Local colour on the mature scene is provided by stylist and fashion editor Jenny Andrew, distinguished dandy-about-town, Alan Foley, ex-magazine editor Jackie Burger, and fashion designer Marianne Fassler.

Ageing gracefully with impeccable style is the future.

Age with style

Ageing is not the death of style. This is the message conveyed by 'Advanced Style', the fashion documentary that follows four gracefully ageing women in New York, written and directed by Ari Seth Cohen. The screening of the film will also open a discussion about the challenges of ageing in today's youth-fixated society. The film headlines the AFI FashionTalks seminar at the Cape Town International Convention Centre for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Cape Town 2014.

Penelope Mashego

Give Away

The Times and Africa Fashion International are giving away five double tickets valued at R260 each to the screening of Cohen's documentary on July 25 at CTIC. To stand a chance to win send an e-mail with your name, contact number and address to tellus@ thetimes.co.za with ARI SETH COHEN in the subject line. Answer: What is the name of Cohen's documentary? Competition closes on July 22.