I'll bet her dress is pretty though

Cheryl gets a kick out of my appreciation and borderline attraction to women of an advanced age, who don't smother themselves in bright red lipstick and big ovals of rouge on their cheeks and who dye their hair colors not normally even found in a crayola box.  I think it probably stems from my upbringing and being surrounded by Quaker women, for whom there is no shame in letting their hair go gray and leaving their house, or even their bathrooms in the morning, without caking on the makeup.

I don't even understand what it is these doyennes are trying to accomplish. Are they trying to look young? The whole recapture the beauty of their youth sorta deal? Or do they just think that is a good look?

I was reminded of this whole subject by this recent story in Huffington Post:

"The beauty of being 90 is that you stop caring -- what people think about you, who you might offend, how crazy your clothes look.

Which is why Iris Apfel, the lovable nonagenarian doyenne with the oversized spectacles and the priceless bon mots, is totally worth listening to. The "geriatric starlet" spoke to the Telegraph and had some choice words about the current state of fashion:


"Now when I walk down Fifth Avenue in the summertime I just want to throw up. It seems that the fatter and uglier people are, the fewer clothes they wear. The shorts and flip-flops and tight jeans on butts that go from here to Poughkeepsie."


The feisty fashionista added:


"I always say they should put people in jail for wearing clothes like that. Especially stretch jeans over size 10 -- they should be outlawed. Ten years ago people were starting to look like slobs in New York, now it's an epidemic."


We'd say that Apfel is being unusually harsh, but she has been around to see a bad trend or two. And these days there are some particularly bad ones, she says, on the red carpet:
"At the Golden Globes and Oscars they all look alike - it seems like they're all wearing the same nightgown and this year nobody had any jewellery at all. Only Helen Mirren was wearing a beautiful necklace, but even she got it wrong because the necklace just ruined the dress. I think the designer must have wanted to kill himself when he saw her."

OK. So that's fine. An older woman with a sense of style and a strong opinion. All good so far...until we see a recent photo:
 

 
Ach!