Dressing in Layers and Other Fun Facts of Life after Fifty

When a woman reaches a certain age - let's call it 50 - and rooms start seeming warm, she is advised to dress in layers. The implication of this recommendation is that she can add or remove layers as temperatures dictate. As with much fashion advice, this, too, is better in theory than in practice.

Having reached a certain age - let's call it 50 - I welcomed this advice. But I have found some flaws:

1. It is expensive and I thought I would save money. While investing in Target t-shirts is far less costly than buying Tse cashmeres, the layering bit doubles everything. Suddenly one is buying two pieces when one would have sufficed before.

2. It mitigates against turtlenecks. While some who have reached a certain age - let's call it 60 - often pose in them, they are hotter than heck. So one has to decide between succumbing to the heat or showing one's neck.

3. It is not for the memory-challenged. Again, when one gets to be a certain age, forgetting becomes more frequent. I cannot tell you how many times I have cast off a layer in a restaurant or slung it over my chair, only to fail to remember it when I leave and then have to return to the restaurant to search for my cardigan, jacket or shawl. (Of course, all of this is good for PETA because furs suddenly seem insurmountably heavy and hot.)

Another problem with this particular fashion puzzle is that it requires a change in shopping patterns:

1. Suddenly, after years of safely skipping those appealing Eileen Fisher ads - with all those great albeit gray-haired dames - I find myself suddenly stopping in Eileen Fisher stores and buying the stuff. The secret of course, is not only, is her stuff airy and made for layering, but figure-flattering or forgiving as well - a huge factor for those who have reached a certain age - let's call it 50.

2. Even worse, one will want to order from those tempting J. Jill catalogs and then, of course, have to trek to a post office to return what one has ordered.

3. Or one might enter Chico's -- a store with a genius idea: label sizes 0-1-2-3 instead of S, M, L and XL. (But don't get me started on those "As We Change" catalogs, which are about as welcome on my mailbox as AARP mailings.)

Comments

[lizbunz]

Hide the elbows. Have you seen your elbows lately? I was just trying on evening gowns and caught a glimpse of them in the rear view mirror of the dressing room. Oh Boy. I guess I could just walk around with my arms slightly bent, all the time. If I get any older, I'm going to want to walk around in a tent. Ski mask anyone?