Theatre Of Life

Last Autumn Channel 4 had us entranced with their documentary charting the fashion lives of six elderly women. Fabulous Fashionistas was a celebration of spurning the twinset and continually embracing style. It garnered an immediate round of applause across social media, now you can sate your appetite for silver rinse once again. Advanced Style, now showing at the Lighthouse, is similar in subject matter to Fashionistas only with a New York twist. Springing from the eponymous and acclaimed blog of street style photographer Ari Smith Cohen, Advanced Style follows some of New York’s most glamorous older ladies as they talk fashion versus style and why they’ll never give up their sartorial ways. Despite what advertising seems to tell us, it ain’t just a young woman’s game. As one of the ladies says in the trailer below, “When you look good, you look good.”

Directed by Linda Plioplyte, Advanced Style, is the perfect midweek treat for anyone who dreams of an eccentric retirement. Cohen’s blog has been a source of fascination and joy these past few years, inspiring both a photo and colouring book, so we’re pretty delighted to have another means to reference people to the eternal glamour of Iris Apfel, 92.

Advanced Style runs in the Lighthouse until this Thursday. In the meantime scroll through this stellar New York Magazine portrait gallery of Manhattan’s grandest dames.

Jeanne Sutton @jeannedesutun