BY DESIGN : Styles for the ‘Third Age’ : A Fashion Experthionert Shows the Forgotten 50-Plus Set How to Put It All Together
The chic, gray-haired maven was on a mission. “The fashion world hasn’t kept up with us,” she told 75 women seated on white plastic patio chairs. “You open any fashion magazine, and where are you?” Nowhere, they all silently agreed.
But Jacqueline Murray, Minneapolis-based author and international fashion consultant, was at the new Target in Pasadena recently to preach change. Evangelically cloaked in a black over-blouse piped with a thin white collar, she led a lively show-and-tell sermon titled “The Third Age: When the Kids Are Gone.”
The “age” covers “people 50 and up,” explained Murray, a frequent flier for Dayton Hudson, Target’s parent company. “And it’s not an automatic retirement period. It’s just rethinking your values, deciding how you’re going to live and spend your time.” With a coquettish shake of her shoulder-length silver hair, Murray would admit only to being “between 50 and 80. That’s good, don’t you think? Because there is a need to diffuse this labeling by age.”
Advocating mix-and-match minimalism, she put her arms a yard apart and said that is all the closet space she needs. Unfortunately, the sophisticated pantsuits, blazers, skirts and day-to-evening dresses she wanted for her demonstration were in short supply, thanks to a buying frenzy.
So she dressed a model in casual clothing: linen-cotton walking shorts ($11.99) and cotton-polyester drawstring pants ($14.99), short-sleeve silk T-shirts ($10.99), multicolored Guatemalan jacket ($19.99) and vest ($12.99), long rayon print dress ($34.99), print scarves ($5.99), woven leather belt ($7.99), straw hat ($4.99), and an incredibly versatile pair of leather sling-back sandals ($18.99).
The peripatetic silk T was at its best worn several sizes too large, so the sleeves were longer, combined with two silk broomstick skirts--black layered over khaki. The skirts went through several moves, with the black one ending up under the model’s arms as a strapless evening dress.
For 90 minutes, the Third Age women, many of them as chic as Murray, ate plump muffins and drank in advice ranging from wearing short skirts (“European women of any age do”) to contacting company presidents to complain about styles (“It works best if 10 women sign the letter”) to feeling as self-assured as any French female in a strapless dress. “She is out there with her wrinkles and her sunspots,” Murray said.
Reactions ran from lukewarm to loving. Ruth Erskine, a youthful 67-year-old in a flax-colored pantsuit, dressy beige sweater, gold earrings and a flawless complexion, was in the ecstatic camp.
“I loved being reminded how basic colors can be combined. And I loved that she said we could accept our age spots. She validates us,” the retired secretary said, beaming. After listening to Murray, she was thinking about wearing short skirts--”with opaque tights.”
But former home economics teacher Joann Lynch objected to the short sleeves on the silk Ts, which would expose flab, and she wanted better tips. “We’ve all read these things,” she complained.
Several women thought model Barbara Gallagher looked too young and too slim. Gallagher, a 57-year-old, Size 8 grandmother from Minneapolis, hotly contested the age issue, saying: “This is what 57 looks like.”
Dressing as young as their daughters--a concern raised by some women--obviously didn’t apply to tall, blond Gyl Roland, a 52-year-old image consultant without children. Wearing an oversize beige blazer, white T-shirt and slim white pants tucked inside high-tops, Roland claimed to be a devoted Target shopper.
It all added up to an “informative refresher course” for Norvell Short, an attractive 59-year-old who said she didn’t have any trouble finding clothes. Unconcerned about flab, she was buying an armful of silk Ts and believed that Murray had overlooked the best tip of all.
“Exercise,” said Short, lifting an imaginary weight.
