ah, the fall! so beautiful, and quickly coming to an end. i must post these pictures before the snow starts to fall! i don't know about where you guys are, but almost all of our leaves have fallen now here in beautiful québec city. early october is always peak season in ontario and quebec, and i had the chance to enjoy the beautiful colours when visiting my family for thanksgiving/indigenous day of resistance weekend at the beginning of the month.
this is my younger sister's wonderful dog, aspen. she is potentially my favourite four-legged creature on the entire planet, not gonna lie. look at my big goofy smile! how can you not love this dog?
and how can you not love the beautiful fall leaves?
if you're interested in that kind of thing... dress: 1950s cotton day dress, vintage clothing fair in ottawa circa 2007 i believe? crinoline underskirt: thrifted necklace: key from the ste. foy flea market, 2$, chain thrifted ages ago belt: from le vestiaire, free oxblood heels: gift from my mother, naturalizer goofy smile: thanks to my awesome sisters and an adorable puppy.
so with that out of the way, we can talk about more interesting things.
the folk festival de québec is in full swing as of tuesday and i am filled with musical love and lust. anne-marie, simon and i went to see ferriswheel and timber timbre, which was so lovely. timber timbre's music is always so perfect around this time of year, and it's always a treat to hear it live. there are so many shows i'd love to have time to check out, but my time and my pocketbook unfortunately will not permit such things. i do think i'll have to go see lisa bozikovic, though.
this beautiful song, no denial, is about the death of her mother, and features some of the most beautiful lyrics.
brilliant gold, crimson red/ the leaves know they're ending/and celebrate their end
i don't think i've ever heard a more beautiful metaphor for death.
this weekend, i was walking down la rue charest on a sunny afternoon, and an older woman caught my eye. she was a waitress leaning out of a window, speaking with a friend. her hair was bright white, except for a streak of neon pink and a dash of purple. on her left upper forearm, there was a small tattoo of a little unicorn's head in black and white. i was in awe. i find it so incredibly refreshing to see older women not get trapped into those boring "how to dress at 40, 50, and 60" scripts that all too many "women's magazines" promote, but at the same time can you blame those who do subscribe to that ideology?
just by taking a quick look at mainstream fashion magazines, we see that the message is overwhelming the same: you are either dressing too young or dressing too old, especially if you are over the age of 30. since you are no longer simply a sex object (with the assumption being that you are a hot sexual nubile young thing in your teens and twenties, but when you're in your thirties you are either a mother, wife, or career woman, or better yet all three!) then you're not really worth looking at or pandering to. advertisers will try and sell you the idea that if you buy our clothes, you will look as young as our models, you will relive your youth, etc. etc, because aging/being old is so completely horrible.
of course, there are exceptions to this boring sexist ageist script. every once in a while fashion magazines turn the attention on their own, like grace coddington, and the runway history makers like linda evangelista, naomi, and kate. but even while purporting to celebrate women of "all shapes and sizes," we all know this is a joke. even with articles hidden in the back, or one editorial that celebrates an actress or singer who is in her forties, older women are constantly being erased or worse, policed. year round, we see that their covers (think of elle, vogue, allure, etc.) feature almost exclusively women in their late teens and early twenties on their covers. the exception, of course, is made when they publish their "age" issue, which now shows skinny, blonde, white women in their 30s! how revolutionary.
but back to my love for the style of many older women i pass on the street, at thrift stores, at the grocery store. one of the main reasons i believe fashion magazines don't pay attention to older women on a regular basis is because they know most of them simply do not give a shit anymore. clearly this is not universally true, but for the most part i think it is easier for younger women to put all the emphasis on their appearance and to buy into the scripts fashion magazines sell them because they are the target audience. they are being pandered to, they see themselves, or at least someone they could aspire to look and/or dress like all the time so it is easier to buy into those illusions and fantasies. based on what many older women have told me, and the conversations i've had with them about fashion and clothing, you often have a better idea of what you want, like, and need which makes it all the more simple to not give a shit about what a fashion magazine has to say about your choices.
seeing this stylish woman this weekend was not the first time i have loved the style, demeanor, and fashion of a person twice, or perhaps even thrice my age, and it's a question that has been on my mind lately. my friend anne-marie has been expressingfrustration at ageism in the fashion and beauty industry. around the same time, jezebel posted about a german magazine called brigitte which recently stopped using professional models, and now often posts the age of the "real" women participating in their photoshoots. last but not least, hellovagina was posting some amazingphotos of stylish older ladies on their tumblr.
but honestly? the fashion blogging world isn't much better than the fashion magazine industry when it comes to representing older women. anyone who takes a quick glance at fashion bloggers will see that it is a relatively homogenous group; almost entirely white, mostly female, relatively thin (at least falling into the "straight" size category), able-bodied and young. 14 (including tavi) to about 30 years old, max. there are a lot of factors that could lead to this (it's a new technology, youth-target audience, etc), but i'll leave it at that seeing as this post is not about deconstructing fashion bloggers or even criticizing them. rather, i want to call attention to how, in some ways, the fashion blogosphere has created at least a small space for us to call attention to and celebrate stylish older women.
to cut to the chase, here are some pictures of some particularly stylish and savvy older women.
iris apfel
chantal thomas (loving everything except for the shoes)
even the most recent CocoRosie video indulges my love:
as my wonderful friend iris says, "i don't plan on my twenties being my most fashionable decade."
the wonderful helen mirren.
but before i go, i want to make one thing particularly clear if i haven't already; i want to celebrate older ladies style, not police them. i feel like the only conversations we have about older women and their relationship to fashion is how to look more youthful, how to hide the fact that they are older, etc. but i like to think that most of the women whom i posted photos of are the kind of women who say fuck off to those rules. they are the ones who have gotten to a point where they simply do not give a fuck what a fashion magazine has to say about their choice of clothing, or their bodies, etc.
but don't let me have the final word! who are your favourite stylish older ladies? are your grandmothers particularly stylish? share photos! links!
things are hectic, happening, hilarious in my life at the moment and i'm away from the computer trying to soak it all up. you would not believe the amount of writing i have in the "drafts" folder on my dashboard, nor the ridiculous amounts of inspiration being thrown at me every single day. so it is not for lack of fodder that i have been absent! rather, lack of time alone with my thoughts and my words.
in the meantime, dear readers, you get some lovely fluff.
in mid-august, my partner's mother gave me a nice set of bangs. the amount of hair i have on my head at the moment is still shocking and surprising to me, but i must admit i am really enjoying it. so in lieu of actual critical discourse about the politics of hair length/texture/colour, i'm simply going to post pictures of people who always made me want to have the haircut i am currently rocking.
needless to say a lot of them are french brunettes.
julie doiron
cat power circa "you are free"
jane birkin
françoise hardy
seriously style icon for life.
eline ros
aretha!
and of course, uncredited images from tumblr
hedy scott, playboy 1965
and with this last heat wave of the summer, i really just feel like doing this:
Instead of just bitching and complaining about the prevalence of pretty and lack of savvy substance, I decided to borrow the idea from activist communities: if you want something to exist or change and it doesn't, do it yourself. I want this blog to be a place where I can explore political notions of fashion (without using too much inaccessible jargon) and have other people give me feedback, and maybe even encourage other feminists interested in fashion to start their own blogs to start even more conversations.
Contact me at juliacaron AT gmail DOT com.
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