Are we looking younger than our mothers/grandmothers did at the same age?

My frien'd's mother, aged 91, was recently admitted to hospital for emergency investigations. The first thing she packed? Her make up bag!

At the moment I am wearing denim shorts and a t shirt an attire my mother would never have worn at my age, 69! I think I look ok. Am just waiting for my two young grandchildren aged three and five, so need comfortable clothes to run around after them!

My grandmothers and mum were beautiful women. Gorgeous skin, thin, glamorous silver hair -- all down to genetics and exercise.

None of them wore jeans - they dressed well. I'm thin, have lovely skin and silver hair, can't be bothered to wear anything apart from jeans or Church dresses. I look the same age for age, wearing vastly different attire.

My mum looked wonderful until the beginning of the pandemic when hairdressing etc stopped at her care home. Before that she was the only resident who had her hair coloured regularly and never looked her age. I don't colour my hair, too much faff! I'm quite happy being grey.
My grandma definitely looked older than I do at the same age (I'm 65) but I don't think I've ever considered it before.

I think and hope that people dress and look how they want no matter what age they are.
I used to care what I looked like, wearing high heels that wrecked my feet and pencil skirts that I couldn’t walk in but I just go for comfort and colour now I am older.
My go to style is comfy jeans which are a cotton mix, brightly coloured top and cardigan, and sketchers slip ons. Have stopped dying my hair and now is grey/white, which I clip up on top of my head, it usually looks a bit messy.
I suppose I look old but maybe not as conventionally dressed as my old mum used to be with her twin sets and brogues.

Casdon

I’d say I look about the same age as my mum did, but she was very different to her own mum. My mum wore trousers in the sixties, and had her hair coloured, but it wasn’t ever permed that I can remember. She kept up with trends too. Even now at 95 she’s very fussy about what she will wear, nothing that she deems ‘for old people’.

😂love it.
My Mum isn’t stylish but doesn’t care and wears what she feels comfortable in.My Nan wasn’t stylish either, or my other Nan who wore black a lot and hair in a bun.Harder lives back then and women didn’t have the time or money usually to keep up with what Mum calls ‘the fashion pages’.So I do think we look better generally and a but younger than our actual age.On the other hand I’ve got a friend who constantly smokes and she’s as wrinkled as a kipper, a bit like Queen Camilla, another smoker.

Babs03 I used to care what I looked like, wearing high heels that wrecked my feet and pencil skirts that I couldn’t walk in but I just go for comfort and colour now I am older.

I do not think that caring how you looked ever meant wearing uncomfortable clothes. When I was working, a rare woman at management level in engineering firms I always dressed well, and it was commented on, but high heels, straight skirts never formed any part of my wardrobe. Jaeger suits and fashionable shoes, with tiny heels, usually Russell & Bromley, were my style and a good line in surprised hauteur should anyone ask me whether I could take shorthand or do some copying

I don't want to disrespect anyone, and I realise it won't make any difference to them, but I felt really sad when a couple of folk commented that they weren't bothered at all about how they look to other people. Just me perhaps, feeling sad. I get pleasure looking the best I can when I go out- not perfect by any means or particularly young. I don't know quite how to describe it, but it's like respecting myself.

I had a great, great aunt who died only two weeks before her 100th birthday. She wore pastel coloured, long skirted, tailored suits with starched white blouses and always a matching hat. She once told me she would never wear black because it made her look old.
I dress in a similar way to my grandsons. Tee-shirts, jean jackets, jeans. I don't it makes me look younger.

Well about 30 years ago my mother told me off for not wearing a twin set. I still don't.

I'd imagine much of the difference I see reflects the fact that mum and my grans had no jeans, as not yet worn/mainstream.

I'm don't like what I see in shops - dismissing trousers, tunics, leggings as matronly. Jeans, Tshirts, jumpers - jackets if need be, is acceptable.

I do not think that caring how you looked ever meant wearing uncomfortable clothes.

Totally agree M0nica.

I think in some ways my mother had a much harder life than I had so it wouldn't be a surprise that she looked older in general. Even more so for my grandmother.

A niece once asked me what the blue rinse brigade was so I told her it was what older women used to do back in the 50s and 60s to hide the grey. She replied 'Oh, so that's like an old fashioned pink-rinse brigade'

Not sure I agree M0nica because I have an abiding memory of my mum at a dinner dance (my first) feeling faint after she’d eaten her dinner and having to repair to the ladies to take off her roll-on.

Casdon

Not sure I agree M0nica because I have an abiding memory of my mum at a dinner dance (my first) feeling faint after she’d eaten her dinner and having to repair to the ladies to take off her roll-on.

But Casdon isn't that a choice?

Lots of women now wear shapewear but you'd have to pay me quite a lot to stuff my inches inside something that's going to make me uncomfortable, hot and sweaty.

AreWeThereYet

Casdon

Not sure I agree M0nica because I have an abiding memory of my mum at a dinner dance (my first) feeling faint after she’d eaten her dinner and having to repair to the ladies to take off her roll-on.

But Casdon isn't that a choice?

Lots of women now wear shapewear but you'd have to pay me quite a lot to stuff my inches inside something that's going to make me uncomfortable, hot and sweaty.

Maybe, but I think they were a lot more rigid and constricting in those days - this one had suspenders and went up above her waist. I think they are a lot more comfortable now - either that or I just choose ones which are more forgiving.

My mother did not look much older at 92 than she did at 52. She always had her own old-fashioned style and outlook.

I think colouring my hair makes me look younger than I am, whereas other people with white hair do not look old, to me. I know that makes no sense.
I am certainly of an age where I need to feel comfortable rather than fashionable, but I do think carefully about what I choose to wear. My children and teenage grandchildren tell me I do not look my age and they do not think of me as old, which pleases me.

At 72 I assuredly do look younger than my grandmothers and great aunts at that age, as they dressed in brown, grey, or navy blue shapeless dresses, thick stockings and lace-up shoes! Add hats, hatpins and gloves when going out, even in the heat of summer.

My mother at my age, was immensly stout (to put it kindly) and increased her girth with loose flowing garments she concocted herself - a very odd, hippy look in the late 1990s.

Never mind comparing myself to my grandmothers - I look younger now, eight months after DH's death than I did at this time last year, when we were told he only had a few months to live. I miss him atrociously, but at least I do not have to worry constantly about him.

My mother-in-law is 100.
Most people assume she's in her 80s.

She does her "stretches" every morning for 20 mins. She says she started as a young woman.

When I look in the mirror I see my grandma. She was a wonderful woman who I don't recall ever wearing make-up though she did order stuff from the Avon catalogue!

I hope when people look at me they see someone as kind and caring as she was.

Looking younger/older is mostly in out genes anyway, regardless how much we try to kid ourselves with expensive stuff. People see through it I'm afraid. How you treat people is far more importnat and can't be faked.

JaneJudge

I think women have refused to be pigeon holed because of their age. Can you remember the beige trouser shops with the elasticated waist dresses (which seem to be in fashion now!)? There was a certain way women were advised to dress. Maybe fashion retailers have realised that those with higher disposable incomes to spend on clothing are those who are older, paid off their mortgages etc and are now marketing their goods at this age bracket

It amazed me recently to see KP in a beige trouser suit.

Some clothes nowadays are so plain. Not in a stylish way, but harking back to the beige trouser times.

I like fashion and try to be as fashionable as I can.magazines etc help me along. Regularly dye my hair and wear make up everyday. My husband seems to approve even though I’m on the larger side. Good cook though😂I also work with younger girls they keep in check. My mum was quite a role model too.

My mother died when she was much younger than I am now, but she was of the generation who had permed hair and always dressed formally. She would have been horrified at me wearing jeans and trainers at my age.
My mother did have a girlish face but the style of the era for middle-aged women made her look older compared with women now.

I should have said that women, caring how they looked, did not need to wear uncomfortable clothes to look good.

But, plenty of women did, and plenty still do. Seeing Celebs teetering on high heels, in dresses, what there is of them, that reveal all and nothing must be incredibly uncomfortable to wear.

My mother, like one of my sisters, never wore trousers, because being relatively bottom heavy, and with relatively short legs, they were unflattering. I am fortunate , I got the long leg gene and wear them a lot.

My mother did once refer to my love for the 'extremes of fashion', At the time, that meant a longish mid calf skirt, she was not talking ra-ra skirts or anything like that. As I said previously, she was recognised as always dressing stylishly, but she was a M&S dresser, so conventional in how she dressed, whereas I like colour in my clothes.

My mother was very stylish. She was the first person to colour my hair and pluck my monobrow ( Frida Kahlow had nothing on me) 😂
Back in time when smoking was the norm she smoked Sobranei cocktail cigarettes when her and my father went out at the weekend. The colours fascinated me.

My mother did not look much older at 92 than she did at 52. She always had her own old-fashioned style and outlook

I like this attitude. I think it's not so much about how old one looks as how at ease one is with one's style especially if it's one that suits your colouring, build and so on.

I don't think it matters if one's style (as defined above) is 'old-fashioned' or more modern either. If you've hit on what looks good on you and makes you look and feel good it just works whatever one's age and whatever the style.

As my mum always used to say: make your own style.