Documentary: 'Advanced Style' - shaking things up

An intriguing documentary in which the film-makers showcase NY fashion of ‘senior citizens’.

Style has never been about following the herd and these creative women are taking a stance against sameness

While it is expected that the young and beautiful will delight in dressing up and making fashion statements, rarely is the same assumed for older women. But recently I came across the trailer of an intriguing documentary, Advanced Style, in which the film-makers showcase the fashion of regular New Yorkers, in the manner of the website The Sartorialist. But here is the catch — all the fashion stars of this film are ‘senior citizens’.

The film forays into the wardrobes and dressing rituals of its subjects, but does not simply stop at interviews, choosing instead to encourage the women to model. And the characters it showcases are inspiring: Ilona, a 90-year-old lady with a mop of fiery hair and matching fake eyelashes and Lynn Dell, “the countess of glamour” whose hat collection would make Lady Gaga jealous.

But advanced style is not just about celebrating older women and bold fashion choices, it also urges us to reconsider the way we think about age. This is not fashion for grannies.

Whether the advanced fashionista is decked in designerwear or is a thrift store queen, whether her style is classic and austere or a flamboyant confluence of glamour, these women have refined their particular mode of dressing to a fine art.

Their panache reminds me of the Marchesa Casati, a fashion icon of the 20s, who famously claimed, “I want to be a living work of art.” While the marchesa went to great lengths to make her costumes theatrical, (becoming the demon faery-queen of the circus that was French society then), these women embody the goal in a comparatively more restrained manner.

Quoting from the film, “You dont want to look crazy — you want to be as chic as possible. But the average person on the street would NEVER wear it.” These women are both muse and painter, putting together their costumes with reference to decades of literature, music, art and love.

They are the scholars of aesthetics, the advance guard of style and the texture of their aged skin complements this style to create what the Marchesa desired: a thing of beauty, a work of art.

We have a lesson to learn from these ladies of New York. In Pakistan, fashion teeters on the edges of conservatism at best. Young women are expected to wear cheerful — but not, God forbid, garish — colours.

As women age the only socially acceptable way to dress is somberly and the only frippery middle-aged Pakistani women allow themselves is hairdye — lots of it.

Meanwhile divorcees seem to be permanently wrapped in the shroud of the social faux-pas of a failed marriage and refuse to let even the faintest hint of exhibitionism kiss their unpainted cheeks.

My own grandmother wore only pastels, a single gold bangle on her slender wrist, and fragile gold hoops in her drooping earlobes.

But her hair, I remember, came down to her hips. Usually she kept it done in a severe plait, but when she would open her tresses to comb them out, I would be mesmerised by the overwhelming femininity of the act.

Without the ruses of sexuality — which is always for another’s gaze — she became complete in her femininity, in her self-absorption, an old woman and her long, long hair.

That, I think, is the ultimate charm of ‘advanced style’. These older women are dressing now only for themselves. They have had years of experimentation and shopping, and have seen decades of changing fashion which now informs their style of abandon.

While we in Pakistan are living in a new culture of ready-to-wear, slowly scrapping the culture of personal darzis, let’s stop ourselves from falling into more sameness.

Our insistence on the appropriate length of the kameez in any particular year is reminiscent of the strictly-enforced skirt length in a more conservative west. Quoting from the film, “Everyone wants to look like everyone else but everyone also absolutely insists that they are individuals.”

Where are the revolutionaries of style? If fashion is just to protect our fragile social standing, creativity will soon leach out of it. Let us desist from pleasing others, as women are so likely to do, and shift our attention to self-expression.

Let vanity be a plaything, not a parent. In Advanced Style, the beauty of the film’s subjects is the expression of inner confidence, playfulness, joie de vivre, a vibrant creative urge and a great sense of humor.

While we usually insist that the young generation must lead change in any social aspect that we deplore, I would say in this case that the opposite is true.

Let there be aunties and ammis who dare to challenge the stare, matriarchs beside whom I can walk with my head up, swelling with self-confidence, assured of the value of my difference. Celebrate your life every morning by enjoying the construction of your daily armour.

Would that I could walk down the street and be inspired by a mere glance at another! Our communities, our cities are the stuff of our existential and emotional education. Let us then express to each other freedom, creativity and joy in what we wear, young or old, as a step towards a more inspired society.

In Pakistan, fashion teeters on the edges of conservatism at best. Young women are expected to wear cheerful — but not, God forbid, garish — colours. As women age the only socially acceptable way to dress is somberly

Anam is a film-maker, educator, yoga instructor, and “itwar bazaar” enthusiast, searching for adventure in the city that always sleeps.

Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, September 23^rd, 2012.

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