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
