She is sixty-four. She wears a flat sandal with a dress most people would save for a wedding — and it works. She moves from a deep red column to a yellow print to head-to-toe navy without ever looking like she is trying. The easy word is chameleon. It is the wrong word. Here are the six small techniques behind a woman who dresses however she wants, and looks expensive doing it — all of them copyable from the clothes already in your closet.

Her name is Sabine. On her own page she does not call herself sixty-four years old — she writes sixty-four years young, and underneath it, two words: ageing with joy. Most people read that as a caption. Read it instead as a method. Because the fashion world tells women, in a hundred small ways after fifty, to choose a lane: classic or modern, covered or confident, safe or seen. It hands you a shorter and shorter list of what you are still allowed to wear, and calls that list elegance.

Sabine ignores the list. And in every look — the loud one, the quiet one, the one a thirty-year-old would call trendy — she is unmistakably herself. She is not changing to match the clothes. The clothes are bending to match her. That is not luck, and it is not a budget. It is a set of decisions, and you can make every one of them. Here are the six, starting with the one your eye registers first.

Continue reading She’s 64 and Dresses However She Wants: 6 Techniques That Make It Work

At sixty-eight, in Paris, Inès de la Fressange still looks more current than women a third her age — and it isn’t because of what she buys. I went through every interview, every photograph from forty years of public life. What struck me was not what she wears. It was the five things she refuses to.

There is a piece in your closet right now with the tag still on it. You bought it for a version of yourself you were going to become. And that morning never came. Most women, faced with this, assume the answer is to buy something different next time. To find the right piece. To upgrade.

It is not. The piece was never the problem. The shopping list was.

Here is what almost no one will tell you about the wardrobe of a woman who looks effortlessly elegant past sixty: it is not built by what she puts in. It is built by what she keeps out. At sixty-eight, in Paris, Inès de la Fressange has worn more or less the same handful of clothes for forty years — a man’s blazer, a navy sweater, flat shoes, jeans without a single rip — and she still looks more current than women a third her age. The reason is not what she buys. It is the five specific things she has refused to put on her body for nearly four decades.

Continue reading Inès de la Fressange’s 5 Style Refusals — The Reason She Still Looks Current at 68

A 66-year-old Parisian model the industry now puts on the Forbes list is curvier than the icons you have been told to copy — and better dressed than most of them. I studied her wardrobe piece by piece. Here is what is actually going on, and how to borrow every part of it, at any size.

When most people first see how Caroline Ida Ours dresses, they brace for the rule every woman over fifty gets handed: that past a certain size, you are supposed to cover, to drape, to apologise with your clothes and take up a little less room. She does the exact opposite. She is curvy, her hair is long and fully silver, and she dresses to be looked at — not to disappear.

And yet this is a woman the industry now treats as an authority. She spent most of her life in an ordinary job, raising two children, and only became a model after sixty — not the kind the agencies were looking for. In the last few years she has been named to the Forbes France 50 Over 50 list, stood in national campaigns, and built a following around a single idea, which she keeps to four words: no rules, no diktat.

So here is the real question, the one worth answering: why does elegant dressing seem to work on her, on a fuller figure, when we are quietly told it cannot? The answer is not that she is French, or rich, or that she lost weight — she did none of that. The answer is five moves, sitting underneath everything she wears. And not one of them is about getting smaller.

Continue reading Curvier — and Better Dressed: 5 Style Rules from a 66-Year-Old Parisian

A French fashion journalist the industry treats as an authority wears, more or less, the same five things every day. I studied her wardrobe piece by piece — here is what is actually going on, and how to borrow every part of it on any budget.

When most people first see how Valérie Tribes dresses, they say the same thing: it is just jeans and a shirt. And they are right. A denim shirt, a pair of jeans, flat shoes, maybe a blazer thrown over the top — nothing you could not find in a Zara, or that is not already hanging in your own wardrobe right now.

And yet this is a woman the fashion world treats as an authority. A journalist who has spent nearly ten years interviewing designers and taking the industry apart on her podcast. Women stop her in the street in Paris. Magazines call her an icon. For wearing jeans and a shirt.

So here is the real question, the one worth answering: if it is just jeans and a shirt, why does it work on her and fall flat on the rest of us? The answer is not that she is French, or thin, or rich. She shops at Zara. She wears the same canvas sneakers you do. The answer is five quiet decisions, sitting underneath the simplest clothes in the room. Here they are.

Continue reading Valerie Tribes Style Decoded: 5 Quiet Decisions Behind “Just Jeans and a Shirt”