Mutton is the New Lamb

ONLY AS OLD AS YOU FEEL Imagine what our old peoples’ homes are going to have to look like for the next generation who need them. At the moment the 80 or 90 year olds are happy with TV, a spot of dancing and bingo. But looking at people like my mum and her friends in their early 60s I can’t see that as the way they’d want to be entertained when the time comes that we can’t look after them anymore.

They’ll have to be refitted with computers, high definition cinemas and whatever else comes along in technology that we will except as part of our everyday lives.

Just in my short twenty-year lifetime the whole idea of what it means to be an “older person” has changed dramatically. It used to mean retiring to the countryside at 65 – or abroad if you were lucky – it used to mean pottering around and gardening for entertainment. Now people are being made to work longer and some people are choosing to start whole new careers in their golden years. In fact, the idea of elderly people or old people seems somehow obsolete when lifespans have increased, medicine has advanced and 60 is no longer the landmark of being old that it was.

After all, the old people now are the one’s who have seen it all. They were there at the sexual revolution, they were there when Jimi Hendrix played the Isle of Wight festival or the Rolling Stones went into exile. They were the first generation not to go straight from child to adult but created the infamous stage of teenagerdom. They basically coined what youth has come to mean today, so no wonder they’re still so good at it. Your mum probably wore an imitation Mary Quant; she probably went on the pill first. And your dad might even have grown his hair long and worn eyeliner.

Therefore it comes to figure that whilst my generation is too busy on facebook to go out and make something of their selves, the older generation is picking up the slack. Whilst it may not yet be the norm, we’re seeing older women more and more in advertising, modelling and on TV and if the media can be read as a signifier of cultural changes then there’s a few more grey haired women about, doing something active rather than passively retiring and looking after the grandkids. This can only be a good thing, the more it filters into the public conscious the more older people are seen and not locked away in the countryside, they become perceived as the active members of society that they, of course, are.

When you think about it young people and old people have a lot in common.

When you’re young you have limited responsibilities, no children, probably not a career and a lot of time of your hands. When you’re older your children will have moved out, you’ve paid off all your mortgages and again you have a lot of time to kill. Both of these conditions allow for experimentation, boundary pushing and impulsiveness. If there’s nothing to tie you down you can do whatever you want. But where older people have experience is in the life they have lived and the lessons they have learnt from the responsibilities in

between. In the epic words of Bob Dylan, “But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”.

Older people have more disposable income – if they’ve saved up enough for a decent pension – and perhaps this is why they’re finally being marketed too with people they identify with. They also have less pressure to conform. There used to be a woman in my city who walked around in a lycra bodysuit and I’m sure no one ever actually said anything to her about it, where as I can’t walk down the street in a short skirt without being commented upon. Equally there’s not the peer pressure as there is in young people, no one’s going to pick on an older man for wearing eccentric trousers, if they comment on it at all. It’s all part of getting to that stage in life, having the confidence to carry absurdity.

I think that’s really the key to why being old now is not the death sentence for most that it used to be. At that age you’re not trying to impress anyone because you don’t have too, you don’t need to wear make up or flatter your figure if you don’t want to. You are really, in the purest form, doing everything just for your enjoyment and that feeling lets out an essence that is the definition of youth.

MUTTON IS THE NEW LAMB I was sitting in a café, trying to avoid the midday sun in the middle of a large city in Crete. I was people watching – as you do – trying to guess peoples’ nationalities. Then a group of older couples walked through, they were laughing, having a great time on holiday. Now there was nothing strange about this apart from what one of the women was wearing.

The dress was something I presume to be from somewhere like New Look, or somewhere equally mundane and fashion savvy on the British high street. On any 11-20 year old it would have blended into the landscape, being as it was, printed with swallows filtered down from Miu Miu S/S __ and having a peter pan collar. However, here was a lady in her 70s at least who I couldn’t take my eyes off in an identical dress.

You’re probably jumping to the conclusion of that horrific phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” but I assure you this woman looked great. White summer hat, white belt nipping her in at the waist and my memory escapes me, but practical sandals for sure. And yet she flittered around from stall to stall, in a dress that she had methodically picked out before the dizziness of the holiday sun. I guess what I’m trying to say is part of the reason she looked so good was the absurdity of the pairing of her and the dress and partly because she wore it as if there was no contradiction at all.

I guess, in a way she was embodying the youthful spirit that fashion itself so likes to encourage and feed off. Her age had nothing to do with it. The fact that she looked ten times better than any teenager just goes to prove that off

the catwalk and out of Vogue, older people are going about their lives looking just as amazing. Often even, more so. Success of blogs such as Advanced Style shows just how much swagger the older generation has. I would definitely go as far as to say it’s because of their age that the clothes look that little bit better. The truth is that by the age of 80 or so you’ve experienced a lot and found what works for you, what doesn’t and what you feel comfortable in.

Now if that is not – as some would have you believe – a sack, and happens to be a mini skirt or the latest skater dress from River Island, why should anyone question that?

Shopping on the UK high street, you would be forgiven for thinking everyone is a size 8 teenager with infinite amounts of money and the sort of lifestyle that calls for multiple party dresses and sky scraping shoes. Most of us, of course, don’t fit that bracket. In fact, at the tender age of twenty I find myself alienated by the person these brands think I am. Every dress I try on is obscenely short, even my more petit friends have problems. It’s as if slowly instead of austerity effecting hemlines, business is actually skimming centimetres away before our very eyes.

So where on earth in this battlefield is the discerning 40+ year old to shop?

Could it be the shops aimed at them, full of mid length floppy skirts and flowing cardigans, as if because this is the generation that bared hippy chic it had never moved on? Well, no. Or perhaps the designer brands seen last season moving more towards business dressing, 50s tailoring and pencil skirts? Well, not everyone has endless amounts of money.

What’s happened instead is that the “Mutton” as we’ll call her, has turned to the shops aimed at “Lambs”, tempted in by promises of tailored trousers and shift dresses in every colour. We now find ourselves in a moment where the lines have officially blurred. You are just as likely to see the new season Topshop range on an 18 year old student as a 50 year old grandmother of two. But is that a problem?

I have a tendency to say no, not at all. A teenager is just as likely to look awful in something, in fact more so, as they find their feet with style and follow the pack. Whereas an older woman (or man) has a wealth of experience and an attitude, often, that will allow them to carry something outrageous off much more convincingly. Like the man who often comes into the bookshop where I work, head to toe in orange corduroy, with a summer hat in every season and a smile on his face. It’s this quirkiness, this elegance as it often materialises that means style and eccentricity that comes off so much more sincerely in older people and means the “Mutton” will always be able to challenge the “Lamb” in the style stakes.