Growing old gracefully never looked better.
“Fashion’s fade, style is eternal,” said Yves Saint Laurent and when it comes to one of 2021’s most joyful pre-occupations his sentiment remains spot on. We are, of course, talking about our increasing appetite to see pictures of women not just embracing style in older age but, well, rocking it.
Whether they’re modelling head-to-toe Versace, working new-season Valentino or, more recently, coordinating their vintage leopard-print lapels with their face masks, it is increasingly as likely that you’ll see an IRL octogenarian owning their look as you scroll through your feed as it is the usual – younger – suspects.
“I guess the popularity is due to an aspirational motivation: young girls just want to grow and age like those ladies who still wear make-up and go to the hairdresser everyday just to go to the grocery store,” muses 28-year-old Angelo, the Italian dental student who moonlights as the man behind the Instagram account we all can’t seem to get enough of: Sciura Glam.
Having started the account in 2016, Angelo has 10k more followers compared to this time last year and has people sending him pictures “every day, all day” to post on his Stories or gird. “They send people from the streets – less this past year of course – but also their grannies and relatives like their aunts,” he says. The criteria, however, is strict.
Worshipping the wardrobes of senior style icons is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Trust Phoebe Philo to have been first in line when she put Joan Didion in her Céline campaign back in 2015. Then there’s Alessandro Michele whose take on twinsets and heirloom tailoring was modelled excellently by Tippi Hedren – who was 88 at the time – in 2018. The legend that is 100-year-old Iris Apfel, who signed a four-year modelling contract with IMG when she was 97, also can’t go without a mention.