French Women Over 60 Only Wear These 6 Things (And the 5 They Never Touch)

📖 Forty years of dressing women over 60, the whole method, set down in one book https://viviansinclairstyle.com/ I went to Paris in 1984 to find out what the secret was, and I came home rather annoyed. I was 31, my shop was two years old and not doing as well as I wanted, and like everybody else in the trade I had decided the French knew something the rest of us did not. So I saved up and went and spent four days looking in windows with a notebook on my knee like some sort of spy. The shops were smaller than mine. The clothes were not more beautiful than the ones on my own rails. And the woman I sat behind on the number 63 bus, easily 65 and the most elegant thing I saw all week, was wearing a navy coat that had been mended at the cuff. I could see the stitching from where I sat. There is no French secret. There is no gene. What there is, is a habit about what comes into the wardrobe in the first place, and a habit can be copied by anybody, in any town, on any money at all. THE PRINCIPLE: a small wardrobe is not a sacrifice, it is a multiplication. Six pieces that all go with each other give you about a dozen outfits and every one of them works. Twenty pieces that do not go with each other give you four, and the other 16 hangers are a daily reminder that you have somehow failed at something. You have not failed at anything. The pieces were never asked to get on with each other, so they did not. The 6 she keeps: • The straight leg trouser: why the FABRIC is doing half the work, the hanging test you can do on any rail, and the one alteration that changes everything • The soft blouse: why a little sheen at the neck throws light back up onto your face, and the quiet colours that do it best • The fitted roll neck: what it takes off the table in four seconds, and the one fold rule • The long coat, which is the big one: for 7 months of the year your coat IS your outfit, how to judge a good one in 15 seconds (shoulder seam, lining, weight at the hem), and why a very good second-hand one beats a poor new one • One pair of earrings, worn constantly until they become your signature • The low heel or the proper flat The 5 she never touches: the slogan top, the wide belt with the big buckle, the enormous chunky trainer, the boxy padded blazer, and the huge bag with a name on it. With what to do instead for each. Plus the half that actually explains the woman on the bus, and none of it is a garment: she has things MENDED, she has things ALTERED to her own body, and she wears the same thing twice in a week without giving it a thought. That last one takes the most nerve and changes the most. Nobody is keeping a list. I promise you nobody is keeping a list. The honest part: do NOT go out this week and replace your wardrobe. That is the precise opposite of the point, and anybody telling you to do it has something to gain from it. You almost certainly already own three or four of the six. Hang those together at one end of the rail and leave them there. That is the whole project, and it costs nothing. 📖 Forty years of dressing women over 60, the whole method, set down in one book https://viviansinclairstyle.com/ Tell me in the comments how many of the 6 you already own, and whether you have a coat you have had mended and kept. Mine is 22 years old and on its second lining. I read every single one. Subscribe for a new video every week on style, hair and elegance after 60.