The year of being sixty two: the pleasures of clothes

I like clothes but I don't like shopping.  When I was working and needed business suits and formal evening clothes I used to shop once or twice a year.  I would take a day off work and make a beeline for a particular shop or small group of shops.  A new suit, with both trousers and a skirt, tops to go with it in interesting colours and silky materials, shoes and boots, a new dress to wear for smart dinners: everything had to go with everything else.  I much preferred to do this shopping on my own.  A friend came along with me one year and was exasperated by the way, in her terms, I wouldn't "look at things properly".  "You shop like a man" she said crossly.  Certainly I don't like spending a long time thinking about it and looking at lots of alternatives.  It was important to look good and to get it right but in many ways it was like shopping for expensive school uniform.

Nowadays I can wear what I like.  Mostly, living up a hill in the middle of nowhere, it is jeans and tops (and often fleeces and waterproofs) but I do like dresses for looking as if you have made an effort when you haven't and the occasional foray into beautiful colours and interesting shapes.  I buy a lot of things on the internet these days and have become very disciplined about sending things back that don't fit really well.  In many ways the clothes that I wear have not changed much in ten or twenty years and are not that different from the clothes worn by my daughters and daughters in law who are now in their thirties.  I have been musing about whether they should change.  Do you remember those articles, which have mercifully become less common, telling you what you should give up wearing after the age of forty or fifty?  Sleeveless tops, short skirts, plunging necklines were all on the list I seem to remember.

I definitely remember deciding when I was forty that I was too old to wear jeans.  I stopped buying denim and started wearing black jeans for a couple of years.  That seems astonishing now.  Certainly by forty five I had gone back to denim and these days there are normally a couple of pairs of denim jeans in my wardrobe.  Jeans used to be part of the uniform of the young but perhaps as my generation have grown older and continued to wear them they have become ubiquitous.  Even my ninety year old father in law had a pair of jeans which he bought in a charity shop when he was eighty five.  They did not look particularly incongruous.  Practical, hard wearing, comfortable, he wore them with fine jumpers, generally demonstrating his age by also wearing a collar and tie.

The clothes which I have given up wearing have been abandoned for reasons of both age and shape.  I used to love little strappy slip dresses, sometimes cut on the bias, leaving a lot of bare shoulder and back.  I haven't worn that kind of thing for years.  One of the younger girls on the flotilla we have been sailing with had a number which looked delightful and I did have a brief pang for the time of my life when they looked good on me but these days a good bra is a necessary part of my life and too much bare flesh begins a look a bit creepy when it is also crepy.  I don't wear very short skirts although I do wear shortish skirts with heavy tights and boots in the winter.  I don't wear sundresses or shorts.  I very rarely wear high heels, not because I don't like the way they look but because I really can't be bothered any more with anything which makes me feel uncomfortable.  So I have shed some clothes which belonged to an earlier stage of my life but there are others, the clothes of ageing, which I don't wear either.  I don't wear trousers with elasticated waists, or beige macs, or beige anything really.  I don't wear sweatshirts or anything from Marks and Spencer (that might be my loss, I think they have improved) or Clarks wide fitting shoes or American tan tights.  I wear quite a lot of particular brands which seem to me to have interesting clothes in lovely materials: Seasalt, Jigsaw, White Stuff.  And very occasionally I go into a small independent clothes shop in Ruthin or Tarporley and buy something unusual or one off. 

For me being interested in clothes is one reason for trying to keep my weight in check.  By this I do not mean that I maintain my ideal weight.  I don't.  I am probably about ten pounds heavier than I would like to be.  But I am also about ten pounds lighter than I was before I went gluten free and there is no doubt that my clothes look better and that I feel better and more energetic for carrying less weight.

But it seems to me that one of the great benefits of an interest in clothes is that it is a pleasure that does not have to diminish as you grow older.  I know stylish seventy year olds and beautifully dressed eighty year olds.  If clothes matter to you they make you feel better (or worse if you get it wrong).  They make the world a brighter and more interesting place.  They make you stand taller and smile more widely.
 
So what kind of clothes do all those things for me?

Well cut clothes that fit properly are the first thing.  Clothes that pull at the waist or wrinkle over the bust or need constant tugging and stretching are a real irritant.  Clothes that sag and bag and don't acknowledge the body inside are a different sort of failure.  Something that fits properly achieves the paradoxical result of making you forget about your clothes while simultaneously making you stand taller, perhaps because you are happier.

Clothes in colours that sing to you also make a difference.  I notice that I have a lot of clothes in a clear turquoise.  It reminds me of Greek Island seas.  I also like soft blues and greys and creams and the occasional jolt of deep shocking pink or orange.

Beautiful fabrics are essential and that does not necessarily mean something individual or expensive.  The feel of a favourite fleece can be like an all day hug.  I  call that a beautiful fabric just as much as a fall of shimmering silk or a crisp cotton shirt.  I love things that roll up to nothing and slip in a case.  I am not keen on things that need dry cleaning.

So here are a few of my current favourites

Day to day uniform: denim cutoffs, Merrell sandals (possibly the most comfortable sandals in the world), bamboo black t shirt (soft, soft, soft) and the aforementioned hug in a fleece.  Not smart but makes me feel comfortable and at ease.

Slightly tidier: new version of same Merrell wonder sandals, Jack Wolfskin skirt sold as a travel skirt, dries in half an hour, rolls to nothing, needs no ironing, and Seasalt top. 

Pure dress, made of really fine jersey, again rolls to nothing and looks good with flats, mid heels like these and high heels.  This is a great example of how wearing a dress  makes it look as though you have made an effort when in fact it is a single piece of clothing, so slightly less effort than the jeans!

 And up at the dressier end of life.  This one is by Boden and closer fitting than I usually wear.  It is a good measure of whether I need to cut back on the crisps and the wine!

What do you wear that gives you pleasure?  Have you found particular issues with clothes as you have grown older or particular forms of clothing or brands that work for you?  Do you care about clothes at all?  Do you too have clothes that make you smile?