It’s no secret that I have an abiding love for all the accouterments of old lady-dom. I love powder compacts, teacups, silk scarves, brooches, back-seam stockings, old-timey perfume, girdles, gin, and more. If I could figure out a way to be arsed to wear my hair in a fancy chignon every day, I’d just go full Dowager Countess in my daily life. I haven’t managed to move past the messy braid stage of life, but I can still dream.
Old ladies just have the best accessories. These are some of my favorites:
1. Brooches
Brooches are fabulous and sparkly. There is no reason only old ladies should be wearing these. Young people should be sticking them in their hair, on their clothes, on their bags, and basically, everywhere you can stick one.
2. Scarves
The more I think about it, the more I realize that old lady accessories are very versatile. There are a lot of creative things you can do with a single scarf or brooch that you can’t do with a necklace or a ring or a YSL grunge tiara.
3. Stockings
OK, I don’t think I’m ever going back to nude pantyhose. I thought about it for a hot minute, and then I saw my legs in this old photo from the 90s. Ugh. Nope. No more nude hose for me.
Dark tights and stockings are still my jam, though, especially if they have a cool, retro back seam.
4. Compacts
I’ve been trying to be good and prudent about spending lately, but I also have an Etsy window open in my browser right now because I keep fantasizing about buying a cool vintage compact. I don’t know how I’d carry it around, considering that my handbag is not neat and ladylike and is currently stuffed with spare change, a scratched iPad, and 400 broken cookies. But in my head, I am a posh old lady with a classy handbag where everything is neat and lined in velvet. That lady carries a vintage compact.
Oh! This one time, I was at an antique shop in Aspen, and a posh old lady came in to look around and got sidetracked by some sterling silver cigar holders. They were enormous and ornate and heavy silver and weighed a ton and were well over $500 a piece. She wound up buying three of them to keep her pens in so they didn’t float around in her handbag. I stared, aghast that anyone would spend $500 on a pen holder, but I’ve always thought that the inside of that lady’s handbag must be very fancy. She probably had a compact in a velvet pouch.
5. Gin
Why is there not a French 75 in my hand right now? You can have my brooches and my scarves and my old-timey perfume. Even my back-seam stockings. None of that really matters as long as you have the love of a good cocktail.
What do you guys think? Go full-on old lady, or stay young while you can? What “old lady” accessories do you think young women should be having more fun with?