New Styles? Love Them or Leave Them?

I recently have been looking at articles discussing hair styles, makeup styles, and what kind of clothing looks the best on people, especially people my age.  I am a slender, working female in my 60’s.  I exercise, try to eat right, and generally try to look my best.  Yes, time has given my body, face, and hair a few changes.  But what I have really noticed is how the fashion industry changes the rules for us almost yearly.

As an example, women my age were once supposed to wear concealer to mask under eye bags and circles, lots of mascara to bring out our faded eyelashes, and pluck our eyebrows to a narrow arch  We were supposed to use blush, or rouge, to bring out the rosy qualities in our cheeks and give us a healthy, youthful glow.  Now, the experts are telling us to stop using foundation, wear little, if any, blush, let our eyebrows be fuller, and stop wearing eye makeup, except for a small amount of mascara.  Other makeup experts tell women with hooded eyes to camouflage the droopy hoods with a combination of eye shadow colors.  ( This actually works on me.)  Lipstick has gone from white or pale when I was a young teenager, to black or dark purple now, with various shades of reds, pinks, and corals in the present and precious years.  Does my face change every year?  Well, no.  Manufactures want to sell more makeup, so they tell us that what we were doing was not as good as what they want us to do now.  

Choose colors and styles that work for you, your stage of life, your profession, and your coloring.  It is not that important to fit in with a current “look” if it does not look good on you.

Then there are hair styles.  Do we wear bangs?  Should they be long, short, side swept, angled up or down on the sides?  Should they be thick or wispy?  Should you wear your hair long, short, all one length, or layered?  Should we curl it, straighten it, or blow it dry into waves? It’s fun to change your hair style, but I think it is best to go with a classic look, rather than a fad look, unless your hair grows very quickly.  Look at the type of hair  you have, how much time you can spend fixing it, what you need for your job or life style, and make your decisions based on those factors.

The cuts of blue jeans and pants has always interested me.  First I had hip huggers with bell bottoms, then high waisted wide legged jeans were in style.  Later there were low rise, and lower rise jeans with boot cuts, straight legs, and skinny jeans.  Most of the time, our bodies do not change that much in a year, so it seems reasonable that a dramatically different cut of pants would suddenly look good on us after having looked bad the year before.  Take low cut skinny jeans or leggings.  The low cut is supposed to draw the focus away from our waist lines and the tight legs are supposed to make us look thin.

While this beautiful lady is no doubt a wonderful dancer, these pants do not make her look thinner.

Hemlines and cuts of dresses also vary from year to year.  In my life they have gone from mini to maxi, to mid calf, back to long, and then short again.  At the time, we were told that short, dresses were the best to show off our figures, then long flowy dresses to make us look feminine and soft.  Mid calf dresses were to hide our thighs, which may or not be perfect, and make our bodies look longer.  The last article I read cautioned about wearing long, loose fitting dresses or skirts because they made us look messy and fat.

I believe those designers simply wanted to sell more of a newer look!

There are several sites online that tell us how to pick out the perfect pair of jeans for our figure, have our hair cut just right, and the best new makeup tricks for us.  Try some of them out, but don’t let go of a tried and true look for a new one that may not be as flattering.  Following the latest style is fun, but looking good is always in style!