The date on this Vogue pattern is 2008, and I know I snapped it up as soon as I saw it. Now, several years later, I still find it just as appealing, with its interesting seaming and shaping, pleats front and back, flared sleeves and off-center closure. Fashion has not passed it by, at least in my opinion. But, then again, I do tend to keep and wear things season after season.All the time and effort I put into garments are a main reason I don't lightly cast them aside. But age, my age, probably also has a lot to do with it. After so many decades of sewing and dressing, I think – I hope – that I have a fairly good sense of what suits me personality-wise and what flatters me physically. Plus, for some time now, there seems to be a really wide range of fashion options rather than an over-riding trend, such as the big-shouldered silhouettes of the late 80s. (Alas, I spent too many of my best years enveloped in "fashionable" over-sized clothes that were less than ideal for my short, I mean petite, endomorphic figure.)
Of course, the flip side of believing that you know what's your best look is what women of a certain age are constantly being warned against: settling on an unchanging style in hair, makeup, wardrobe. It's a balancing act, isn't it, keeping current without slavishly following trends. At least older women aren't expected to dress in the dreary, discreet manner that seemed to be de rigueur in decades past, as the blog American Age Fashion so often illustrates. Rather, it would be wonderful if we all had the courage and the verve of the ladies of Advanced Style. My own look is much more sedate, but, who knows, in another decade or two, what I might feel inclined to sew and wear.
