Welcome to 2015, hopefully filled with more stylish and clever older women

Ooh it’s tough getting back to work after a long break, isn’t it? We do hope your festive holiday was fun, we enjoyed ‘unplugging’ from all things digital (although we were still pottering about on twitter and Instagram) and return to you refreshed and ready to leap stylishly into 2015.

2015 has got off to a good start for us grown up women with the Dolce & Gabbana SS15 marketing campaign, featuring nona-chic style (which you may remember, we mentioned back here….). We were much more visible last year in the media, real strides were made in understanding our market, but there’s still a way to go, here are a few areas we’d like to see improved in 2015

Molly Parkin and Middleagedad, two of Selfridges Bright Old Things

Grown Up Story Telling

Since there are so many of us grown up people around (the over 50s account for over half of UK consumer spending apparently) it would be nice to see us appearing in more windows and marketing campaigns of stores we love and buy from regularly.

Take a leaf out of Selfridges book, where the Bright Old Things campaign starts on Thursday.The retailer is featuring (in store and in windows) 15 older artists, designers and creatives who are being adventurous with their later years instead of fading quietly away, with each person’s story being featured on the Selfridges website. I will be spending this week helping middleagedad put his window in, so more about this soon, but follow us on Instagram for inside-the-window action on Wednesday. There is already a storm of press on the subject, the best from Business of Fashion and The Telegraph so far.

Anti Anti Ageing.

The whole concept of language around ageing needs a complete overhaul. Yes, we want to look our fabulous best as we get older, but this doesn’t mean we’re ANTI getting older. Using the words anti-ageing on products is starting to make me want to NOT buy whatever it is.

A recent Datamonitor report claimed that us over 50s want to concentrate on looking good via a more honest approach to ageing. When we started the blog, the words ‘anti-ageing’ was a sign that brands were at least taking our demographic more seriously, but things have moved on since 2008, so let’s drop the use of ‘anti’ (beauty brands and magazine editorials we’re looking at you) and start talking ‘pro’ ageing and how we can all live better and more beautiful lives as we get older.

More Muses.

It’s still darn hard to find images of grown up role models to inspire us on how to live and dress. You really need to know where to look (mostly on blogs) and it shouldn’t be that hard. As much as I love Helen Mirren and Kristin Scott Thomas (well done on becoming a dame btw) I’m a teeny bit bored of them being wheeled out every time ‘stylish older women’ are mentioned.

There are so many lovely grown up women out there who have great style. As we’ve said many times before, as we get older we get even more different from each other, so we need variety! One of the sites I looked at most last year was Stylelikeu, where women from every generation are featured, covering many different style-tribes. If you’ve never watched the what’s underneath videos, go there now and watch this one. My current girl-crush is on Mary Randolph Carter above, who seems to have been – through her work with Ralph Lauren-  part inspiration for the original Annie Hall. More of this please and Happy New Year to you all.