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It's Not Easy Getting Old

A company with a sensitivity to the needs of older women, Sigrid Olsen, is shutting its doors. This is part of a new trend that limits options for this segment of the buying public, according to a recent New York Times article. Other lines like Dana Buchman and Ellen Tracy are being downsized significantly, while specialty retailers such as J. Jill are closing stores. What’s going on here? Since the US population is aging, why are companies targeting older women closing shop?

Apparently the problem is caused both by producers and consumers. On the supply side, the older market is not as profitable as lines aimed to younger customers. Older women don’t buy as much. They often have a look they are comfortable with and don’t experiment as much with new styles. In addition, they don’t have as many occasions where special clothes are required. Financially the big bucks line with the young.

But older women have to assume some responsibility as well, as much as I would like to blame corporate capitalism for our problems. Apparently most of us don’t want clothes that are somehow easily tagged as “old.” That means that retailers who try to meet our needs get overlooked in favor of lines that span the generations. Some of us even insist on wearing clothes intended for teenagers in order to prove that we are still young-looking and fit.

Are we at an impasse? I continue to think that there is a big market for comfortable, elegant, and well-designed clothes for older women. But we need to make our needs known and use the power of the purse to support the brands and stores we love.

Make Do and Mend

A lot of environmentally friendly advice these days stokes the flames of American consumerism. Replace your old drier with a new one; trade in your polyester clothes for bamboo. While the results can make ecological sense in terms of energy use, we still end up with more things to toss into land fills.

The concept of “made do and mend” proposes another alternative. It originated in war-time Britain, when everything including clothes was rationed. (The US had its own less radical version.) Booklets urged women to reduce, reuse, and recycle just about everything. One of these manuals, recently reprinted, is packed with tips on how to lengthen stockings, create stylish patches, and recut old garments into new designs. At an exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London, I even saw an elegant dress made out of a silk map!

As the name implies, make do and mend is particularly well suited for clothing. It takes only a few darts and a hem to convert a long boxy jacket, popular years ago, into a shorter more form fitting version. This is yet another reason to learn how to sew!

Pants in the F amily

Glamorous photos of Katherine Hepburn might lead you to believe that everyone wore pants in the 1930s and 1940s. Not so! In this subset of fashion, Hepburn was an early adopter. How do I know? I have been reading Ph.D. dissertations by home economists who study what people actually wear, not what fashion magazines or movies tell them to wear. This fascinating subfield is called “clothing behavior,” a term that surely deserves its own investigation. (Can you make your clothes behave?)

According to one study that examined the clothing choices of three different age groups, women over sixty-five wore dresses almost all the time in the mid 1960s. While younger women donned pants to keep house, shop, and serve the family meal, their mothers and grandmothers wore dresses for everything, including house cleaning. Those more formal days are long gone, and now I rarely see a woman over sixty-five in a dress. When did the change take place? Maybe we can correlate the rise of pants to the disappearance of gloves? Now there’s an interesting hypothesis for a dissertation.

Hearth and Home

In one of those happy accidents on the internet, I stumbled upon a wonderful website hosted by Cornell University called Hearth, which documents the history of Home Economics in the US. Perhaps you do not think that this is an interesting topic, remembering you own seventh grade experiences or humorous depictions of Home Ec classes in movies. I hope this site will convince you otherwise!

Historically, Home Economics departments were havens for academic women who were not welcomed elsewhere at the university. They taught design, marketing, nutrition, hygiene, and a host of other topics that now are integrated under other programs and schools. The website is a treasure, with full text journals, the texts of rare books, and amazing photographs. In my quest for information on how older women have dressed (and been advised to dress) in the twentieth century, this is an amazing resource. There are sources on design as well…and the best thing is that you can search it all in your own hearth and home.

The Big Black Dress

It was Chanel who made the little black dress famous in 1926 and changed the image of black from old to young. Ever since black clothing has made a statement for youth, from the beatniks, to the Goths, to Project Runway.

But before Chanel, what we might call the “big black dress” was the monopoly of older women. This was the wardrobe staple of women over fifty. According to a 1902 article in Ladies Home Journal, “A gown of black silk for an elderly lady is always in good style for either an afternoon, evening, or house gown. One is never at a loss for something to wear when a black silk is among one’s possessions.” The magazines are filled with drawings of appropriate black clothing, cut for the aging figure.

Today’s fashion journals and commentators often advise against black for older women, warning that it can be too harsh against older skin. But perhaps this advice is partly based on the assumption that black is for the young. I say: one good turn deserve another. Take back the black!

Me and my Menopot

I think one of the worst side effects of menopause is the pot belly that develops as a result of estrogen loss. Dr. Pamela Peeke, in her book Body for Life for Women, calls this rounded belly a menopot, a clever term linking it directly to menopause. Now I have never been a willowy person, but until the last decade I could always boast a flat stomach. Not any more. If I tucked my shirts in (which haven’t done in years), I might look similar to Twiddle Dee.

Peeke compares menopause to a reversed adolescence. Just as estrogen flooding the system changes young bodies quickly, the end of estrogen does the same. Despite all the happy-face books on how we should honor this stage in women’s lives, many of the changes are not for the better—muscle loss, bone density loss, and the migration of fat upward to the belly. There are solutions, however. Eat a lot less and exercise a whole lot more. The good doctor recommends marathons.