{"id":182,"date":"2019-05-03T16:07:13","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T16:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/?p=182"},"modified":"2020-05-03T16:16:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T16:16:39","slug":"its-your-body-dress-how-you-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/its-your-body-dress-how-you-like\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s your body, dress how you like"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m firmly in the \u2018dress how the hell you want\u2019 camp, unless you\u2019re my child walking through the town centre at night, in which case I\u2019d make an intervention until you were old enough to understand the effectiveness of more layers. Well, now that\u2019s out of the way, I\u2019d like to throw open the whole hoary debate about how you choose to dress, especially as you age when your figure is under the triple threat of post baby body, creeping menopause and incorruptible gravity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dress to suit your spirit, your personality. It’s your body.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve succumbed to the triple threat myself, despite plenty of rear-guard action, yet I\u2019ve always felt confident about how I dress, and that\u2019s increased as I\u2019ve gotten older. I wear whatever pleases me, as long it suits me and the occasion. Now and then I\u2019ll ask my kids\u2019 opinion, no, not for their seal of approval, more for the compliments; they\u2019re great like that. Then something happened in my late 50s that made me re-evaluate my whole attitude to how I dressed: \u201cYou can\u2019t wear that mum, it\u2019s too short. It\u2019s just not right.\u201d My three kids weren\u2019t commenting on a pair of bottom-baring Kylie Minogue-style hot pants, but a grey silk dress (alright, it was 100% viscose) from All Saints that I wanted to wear to a swish summer party in southern Spain. I felt a little tremor of excitement when I realised the roles were now reversed, and my kids were lecturing me on \u2018the effectiveness of layers\u2019. Yes, it was shorter than I\u2019d normally wear in the UK, but I\u2019d be tanned and realistically just one of many women getting their legs out. But my kids\u2019 reaction was so immediate and their verdict unanimous, I packed the All Saints in my suitcase but wore \u2018old faithful\u2019 (my LBD) instead.<\/p>\n

Most of us have an LBD that we rely on, mine\u2019s an elegant, knee-length style that will never date, but nor will it ever make me look edgy, or dare I say it, sexy? Was that what my three were worried about? That their mum might attract the wrong kind of attention or perhaps they thought it wasn\u2019t a good look for their mum? Maybe 50-year-old Helena Christensen was going for sexy rather than elegant when she chose to wear a black lace bustier and jeans to Gigi Hadid\u2019s denim-themed 24th<\/sup> birthday party. For those of you who don\u2019t know the background to April\u2019s social media fashion spat, here\u2019s my executive summary: ex-Vogue UK editor, Alexandra Shulman, saw a picture of the Danish model in said outfit and wrote in her Mail on Sunday column that she looked tacky, was only wearing a bustier to show she wasn\u2019t past it and, basically, once you\u2019re 50 you should avoid fashions that only a younger person\u2019s body can successfully pull off. This cock-eyed, schoolmarm invective was met with a blast from both designer barrels as fashionistas lept to Christensen\u2019s defence. But would Shulman have berated Christensen, I wonder, if she was, dare I say it, podgy? Of course she wouldn\u2019t, the backlash from being fattist would have been lethal; instead she\u2019d have celebrated this confident woman, who\u2019s demonstrating the joy of being able to wear whatever she wants to express her mood and personality. And isn\u2019t that what true fashion\u2019s about? To be enjoyed? I think I\u2019m enjoying fashion more now because age has given me the confidence to take more risks. Of course I have a healthy respect for my figure, so know what to hide and what to accentuate, and I feel that I have a strong sense of my personal style too, but the lesson I learned long ago, it\u2019s not what you wear, it\u2019s the way that you wear it. And that\u2019s never going to change. \u00a0And I really should have worn the shorter dress to that summer party too because, like Christensen, I didn\u2019t want to look elegant at that summer party, I wanted to rock my look, to push it, to be bold, but I held back. Never mind, there\u2019s always this summer, and I\u2019ve still got the All Saints.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all getting older and want to enjoy our lives as much as we can, so it helps to be both proactive and reactive and it\u2019s never too late to start. If you\u2019d like to hear more about dressing appropriately and inappropriately, whatever your age, please take a look at my \u2018Fattist \u2013 moi?\u2019 YouTube video <\/em>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0eAH5RTa_-Q&t=368s<\/a>, and enter in to the discussion. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m firmly in the \u2018dress how the hell you want\u2019 camp, unless you\u2019re my child walking through the town centre at night, in which case I\u2019d make an intervention until you were old enough to understand the effectiveness of more layers. Well, now that\u2019s out of the way, I\u2019d like to throw open the whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16,15],"tags":[24,23,25,19,28,29,27],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fashion","category-silver-foxes","category-style","tag-ageing","tag-exercise","tag-greyhair","tag-health","tag-lbd","tag-menopause","tag-vitamind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}