Fashion notes: Find your own look, regardless of your size, shape or age

Fashion can be a cruel mistress – scathing in the way that the most horrid girl at school was, only with better hair and more expensive shoes. The same girl who will later look over your shoulder at a party before sweeping off to find someone more interesting. Or thinner.

Like it or lump it, we’re obsessed with celebrity, youth and appearance. The plot is often so fantastical and toe-curlingly silly, one wonders how there isn’t some sort of revolt. Perhaps we’re simply too tired. Or maybe, over time, our once brave and curious self has been overshadowed by insecurities, and so it becomes easier to follow a brief and emulate those around us.

Messages with damning overtones are fired off from all angles – the aim is to exclude, so we all feel terrible and go out and buy more.

Certainly, we’re encouraged to marvel at the polished exhibits who tick all the boxes – those who have mastered the art of the “stylish” uniform. The thing is, we can do better than that.

Do we really want to look like everyone else, with the matchy-matchy heels and sunglasses? Ask yourself what sums up your style – are you aiming to fit into a predetermined category that some fashion intern (who gets paid approximately the same amount as a chimney sweep) has set? Or are we choosing clothes that we happen to love – clothes that mark us out as who we are?

Appropriate. Another rotten old word tied up with age and fashion – and one that certainly stifles individuality. Dressing exactly as we’re told is nothing more than style by numbers – so predictable, so calculated, so worked at.

Certainly, what I’m asked most about fashion revolves around the negative connotations that come with age and size. Are we too old for long hair? When is it acceptable to go grey? Am I too large to wear a sleeveless dress?

It’s a strange old thing, because surely we become more accepting of the world as it really is as we get older. Surely things that once caused a certain level of neurosis are now open for at least a little bit of negotiation?

What we really have to focus on is what flatters us and what we enjoy, not what we feel that we should like, or look like. While the old version of feminism was violently opposed to lipstick and heels, the new incarnation allows us to dabble in such frivolous notions (if we so wish). For that’s the kind of freedom that we’ve worked so hard for.

The cold, hard truth of the matter is that once you hit your 40s (or whatever decade the perceived loss of youth hits you like a brick), we simply aren’t young anymore. This is a fact. What shows real good sense, however, is realising there’s no need to make a noise about it. We can still look fantastic. Just a different kind of fantastic.

Perhaps there’s just a time when accepting our lot ought to triumph – what we forget is that it’s impossible to reclaim.

So let’s try our best to ignore all of the patronising style edicts and tat that appeal to our least-attractive traits – jealousy and inadequacy – and learn to carve out new battle lines. Ones that are our own.

There will be times, in the eye of the storm, where sending out the raw, unedited version may unnerve us somewhat. But never mind – here’s hoping that we have much bigger fish to fry.

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