Fashion

Style as we age: "In my later years I don't want to look like everyone else"

"In my later years I didn’t want to look like everyone else. In my 20s I was in miniskirts, and in the 1970s – my favourite era – I just loved long skirts and wedge shoes."

Tue May 26 2015 - 12:00

Part of a four-part series on how style changes with age

How does our fashion style change as we get older? With Joan Didion (80) posing for Celine, Italian grannies featuring in Dolce & Gabbana’s current ads and Helen Mirren starring in beauty and fashion campaigns, how mature women dress is suddenly in fashion focus. As we near the end of Bealtaine, the festival celebrating female creativity as we age, four Irish women from 52 to 80 discuss their style over the decades. In part two of this series, we hear from Moira Nolan Prunty (76), retired teacher.

My style has changed utterly over the years. My mother came from a family of seamstresses in Hollywood and never wasted anything.

She made my Communion dress and I didn’t like it, so I threw a tantrum – for hours. She got me to wear it – I still have the photo – and it’s absolutely gorgeous to look at now. I wanted to be like everyone else then.

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In my later years I didn’t want to look like everyone else. In my 20s I was in miniskirts, and in the 1970s – my favourite era – I just loved long skirts and wedge shoes.

My sister and I got our hair done in Vidal Sassoon. I think hair is important and I have spent a fortune on it over the years. I found a hairdresser, Olive Hawley, who trained in Knightsbridge and told me that I had good facial features, good cheekbones and that a much shorter hairstyle would suit me. I go to her every six weeks. A lot of women look older because they let themselves go grey – it would not have suited me.

Now that I am coming up to 77, I am a bit eccentric. I like long frocks for weddings, but during the day I wear black, skinny trousers and casual tops. My big thing is jewellery and pashmina scarves; I spend a fortune on them. I love those long fringed tops over leggings which cover up the bulges, so that’s what I wear now.

In the 1980s my marriage went bad and I had no interest in clothes or hair, but when that ended in 1986 I became interested in fashion again because it reflected the mood of the time and my mood.