For The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman writes about power and representation when it comes to age in the fashion world.<\/p>\n
The young are so \u2014 well, old hat. Or so it increasingly seems.
\nSelfridges, after all, is simply the latest member of a movement arguably commenced in 2010 by the photographer Ari Seth Cohen and his \u201cAdvanced Style\u201d blog\/book\/documentary series, which was quickly followed by the 2013 British documentary \u201cFabulous Fashionistas,\u201d featuring the happening wardrobes of six women with an average age of 80; the elevation of the nonagenarian Iris Apfel to icon status (she was most recently the subject of a documentary by Albert Maysles); and a river of beauty- and fashion-ad campaigns featuring \u201colder\u201d women: Charlotte Rampling (68), Helen Mirren (69), Diane Keaton (69) and (this week) Joan Didion (80).<\/p>\n
Even the 47-year-old Julia Roberts is currently the face of Givenchy, and three unnamed grandmas star in Dolce & Gabbana\u2019s new ads.
\nOiled by the \u201clongevity revolution,\u201d so named by a 2014 Bank of America Merrill Lynch report on the \u201csilver economy,\u201d which found that the average wealth of 50-plus households in the United States is $765,000; the average for 50-plus households in Britain is \u00a3541,000 (about $690,000), and it\u2019s \u00a3723,000 for ages 60 to 64. Add the shrinking spending power of the employment-challenged younger generation, and fashion\u2019s sudden embrace is shaping up to be a bona fide trend.
\nBut while it\u2019s one thing to pay lip (and advertising) service to the importance of the mature market, it\u2019s another thing entirely to design for it. And the truth is, catwalks are still speckled by short skirts and skinny trousers, the sheer and the sleeveless.<\/p>\n
The fashion world is largely run by older people, from designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani, each in his early 80s, Ralph Lauren (75) and Donna Karan (66) to the editors Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld and Franca Sozzani, all in their 60s.
\nHere\u2019s the disconnect: On the one hand, fashion pays endless aesthetic homage to youth; on the other, it remains firmly in the thrall, and power, of the mature. Even for an industry that has made something of an art form out of holding contradictory ideas at the same time (loving both pelts and pets, for example; showing spring\/summer in autumn\/winter), this is hard to reconcile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman writes about power and representation when it comes to age in the fashion world. The young are so \u2014 well, old hat. Or so it increasingly seems. Selfridges, after all, is simply the latest member of a movement arguably commenced in 2010 by the photographer Ari Seth Cohen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[764,1873,1874,1878,1882,1880,1879,1051,436,1875,1883,1872,1876,1881,1871,1877,822],"class_list":["post-11125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-age","tag-age-diversity","tag-anna-wintour","tag-carine-roitfeld","tag-donna-karen","tag-franca-sozzani","tag-giorgio-armani","tag-givenchy","tag-good-reads","tag-julia-roberts","tag-karl-lagerfeld","tag-new-york-times","tag-older","tag-ralph-lauren","tag-vanessa-friedman","tag-young","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11127,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions\/11127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}