The Inspired Shopper

I stood with my head pressed against the glass. Behind it, a thoroughly empty shop, long and narrow. The bald fact of it: walls, carpet, back door. Everything else – the shelves, the posters, the old counter at the back with its pale pink curtain into the inner sanctum that held the DVDs – all gone. The closing down signs still mocking the windows, a picture of understatement.

How absurd, to get upset about a video store closing! How old was I? Well, it was early January, which is always a disorientating time for me. And this was a local video store, not a franchise, owned by a sweet family headed by a short, white-haired middle-aged woman who always treated me with kindness and courtesy. This family were already installed in the store when I started to use it after returning, ten years ago, to live in the nearby suburb where I grew up.

It was a damn good video store, with plenty of stock to choose from. It charged only $3 for new releases, obviously an attempt to compete with the DVD vending machines that had become a fixture at supermarkets in recent years.

It had no pretensions to being an arty place aimed at cinephiles – I used to think how much more it could do to capitalise on the hordes of students in the area – but the owner had realised, she told me once, that keeping a back catalogue of videos rather than selling most of them off was good for the business, tiding it over whenever the crop of new releases was particularly disappointing.

My angst came from several sources. I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye and thanks for being real, and independent, and genuinely friendly. Mixed in with this was the frustration of human curiosity – I’d missed the inside story. I’ll never know whether the owner had simply had enough and was retiring with a nice little nest egg, or, much more likely, was a victim of the switch to vending machines along with the rise of Quickflix and internet streaming – and perhaps rising store rents.

But it wasn’t just the owner I’d lost the chance to say goodbye to. It was the shop itself, its familiar layout, the time I used to spend painstakingly choosing my five weeklys for only $6.50. I’ve used those DVD vending machines, but it’s just not the same. Going out to choose a video is still a treat for me, and having a machine dispensing it takes all the fun away.

The small losses of daily life

As we get older, familiar places seem to become more important. There is so much change, and yet another small adjustment can sometimes seem like a blow.

Gerontologist Professor Kenneth Doka has an expression for the sense of loss that we have trouble letting go of because our grief is not socially sanctioned – he calls it disenfranchised grieving.

Such losses are often large but they can also be small ones. Life is full of them – every new stage we enter results in the shedding of old routines, places and companions – but modern life changes so fast that we may be in a state of constant adjustment, never having the chance to find our feet until the next earth tremor of change.

Shops are commercial ventures, but the ones we visit regularly become part of our psychic maps, our mental touchstones. I hadn’t expected to feel bereft when the Borders store at my local shopping mall closed. This occurred when the entire Australian arm of the business went into receivership in 2011. All over Melbourne Borders stores were holding closing down sales and I joined the swarms of bargain hunters combing the fast-emptying shelves for books going for a couple of dollars.

I wasn’t prepared for the sense of loss once the Chadstone Borders at closed. I knew that it was a heartless multinational, had read somewhere that workers in its US stores were so poorly paid they had to get second jobs to survive. Nevertheless there was something profoundly civilising about all those books in my local shopping mall. I’ve always fetishised books and it was the sheer number at the Borders store with its two floors that captivated me.

Still, losses have their consolations. About a year ago a new independent bookstore moved into Chadstone, with genre labels that look a bit home made, and a refusal to grant the kinds of massive discounts that stores like Borders and Dymocks have relied on. It’s a new branch of the independent chain Robinsons Books, and seems so far to be well patronised – long may it reign!

Have you ever experienced a sense of unexpected loss when a familiar store closed down?

Until next time!

Picture:  Caitlin Bussey

There are so many great fashion blogs on the web these days, it’s difficult to keep track of them all. One blog that stands out is Advanced Style, which celebrates the fashion flair of older women. 

The blog’s creator, Ari Seth Cohen, roams the streets of New York taking beautifully styled photographs of older people with creative personal style.

The success of this blog has been phenomenal. It attracts around 150,000 visitors a month. It’s featured on television many times, there is an upcoming documentary and Advanced Style coffee table book and colouring book. One of Cohen’s favourite subjects is Ruth, a 100-year-old woman who dresses elegantly every day, exercises daily, travels overseas with her boyfriend and still does Pilates.

There are so many reasons to love this blog, but it’s what it avoids doing as much as what it achieves that makes it so radical.

Advanced Style doesn’t talk down to its readers. Just the opposite – it invites their participation. For the women who regularly showcase their outfits on the blog and have become friends with Cohen, it often becomes a collaboration. Their involvement helps to shape the blog.

There’s hardly a tight forehead in sight. No judgement on those who succumb to ‘enhancement’ such as Botox or plastic surgery, and I’m sure a few of those featured have had the odd nip and tuck, but it’s refreshing to see women who aren’t trying to look young. Instead their aim is to look great and stylish at whatever age they happen to be.

It encourages diversity of expression. Traditionally the only option for the stylish woman as she grew older was to choose the elegant, refined route – pearls, linen, crisp suits and so on. Luckily that no longer applies. The blog includes plenty of traditionally elegant women, but this is just one option. And often a chic line is combined with a bold use of colour and shape to provide eye-catching looks that are both elegant and adventurous; in other words, elegance doesn’t have to be boring.

It encourages creativity and fun. Advanced Style demonstrates that as we grow older, style can become more individualised. These women dress to be noticed, but they also dress for themselves and for creative freedom. The approach is lighthearted. Too often fashion is presented as a serious business. This blog celebrates the creative, fun aspects of fashion.

All this has important implications for both the cultural image and self-image of older women. The point is not to look alluring to a man, but to dress for yourself and, if you are so inclined, to create your look as a work of art. Attention, originality, detail and experimentation are the catchwords here.

This has the potential to lift the confidence and self-esteem of older readers. Not that all readers need such a nudge of course: the women featured in the blog have truly come into their own, and this is where the message to the wider community – that older women are to be respected and their power acknowledged – comes in. (The blog doesn’t exclude stylish men – they are in the minority of course, but some extremely stylish older men are featured.)

Younger readers also get the message that not only is it okay to get and look older, but getting older is an opportunity to grow as a person, and to develop a stronger sense of self. In a sexualised, youth-obsessed culture, these women are role models for younger women.

There are a few drawbacks. Many of the women do wear clothes that are, well, pricey; New York’s well-heeled are not absent from Advanced Style, and sometimes the lifestyle aspects are, ahem, aspirational. However, there’s also a fair bit of upcycling and op shop chic, and plenty of vintage and alternative designers. Overall the blog is refreshingly free of fashion ‘snobbery’.

You don’t have to be rich to gain from this blog. You just have to love the idea of expressing yourself through what you wear – you can do this at any age, of course, but the older you get, the better you’ll get at it.

Advanced Style is not the only blog to celebrate getting older with flair. Pilgrim’sMoon, Not Dead Yet Style and The Style Crone are also well worth a look.

Until next time!

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