Staying Age-Appropriate

“I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

Do you live by Francis Bacon’s motto?

Whether you do, or whether you’ve been paying into a pension fund even before you got your first mortgage, your style should reflect where you are right now in life. Although your actual chronological age is definitely worth considering, this is more about your lifestyle, your priorities, and just how you want the world to see you.

Given that we all mature at varying rates – both biologically and behaviourally – we’re going to sidestep a simplistic, and slightly ageist, rundown of decade-based style diktats, and serve up a few thinking points instead.

Dressing Too Young

“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age,” wrote the French literary great Victor Hugo.

Growing older doesn’t have to mean dressing boring. There’s no hard and fast rule that you need to swap crew neck T-shirts and leather jackets for knitted polo shirts and bland cardigans once you hit fifty, provided you’re taking proper care of yourself. Still, there’s a fine line between admirable irreverence and desperately clinging to your youth.

You might be dressing too young when:

You’ve been shopping at the same shop for the past ten years – or longer

It’s worth regularly re-evaluating the brands you buy. As your disposable income increases and your taste becomes more refined, you should be swapping fast fashion for high quality, stylish investment pieces that are anything but a flash in the pan.

Could it be time for that expertly engineered trench coat, that luxurious cashmere jumper, or those suede monk-straps you wouldn’t have dreamt of owning ten years ago? We’d hazard a guess that, yes, yes it is.

While we’re all for smart high-low combinations – an inexpensive white T-shirt with premium selvedge denim, for example – as you mature, so should your wardrobe, and that means no more sourcing entire head-to-toe looks from high street chain windows.