Fall 2010 Fashion Week

The Fall 2010 Fashion Week in New York City just wrapped up. Since I’ve made it my mission to find flattering styles for women over 50, I thought I’d take a sneak peek at what we’ll be seeing in the stores next fall. By and large, I don’t have occasion to wear runway designs. Most of them are like precious modern art—beautiful and provocative, but not exactly suited for office work or pizza night. (Case in point: the photos accompanying this post.) Also, it’s often hard for me to imagine myself in clothes worn by multi-story, toothpick girls. However, runway fashions do trickle down to designs for us mere mortals. And I’m happy to report that some of the fall designs will flatter the 50+ figure.

The designs I've posted here are fabulous, but awfully formal. If you'd like to see less formal wear,you can go to:
The official Mercedes Benz Fashion Week site http://mbfashionweek.com/newyork/
Or…

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/index.html
The Times has a lot of fun stuff to look at like...

Fall 2010 trends at:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/09/fashion/TRENDSPOTTING_FW.html




Click on "See All Collections" to view designer collections. My favorites:
Ralph Lauren
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html?ref=fashion#/fall_2010_lauren_ralph/slide_show
My husband doesn’t like Ralph Lauren’s clothing. “Ralph Lauren just steals from past styles,” he grumbles. If you look at RL’s fall 2010 collection, you might just agree with my hubby. The Times calls it “dark romance and Edwardian era.” The thing is, I like romantic and Edwardian (sans the tassel caps). At my age, flowing printed skirts and dark velvet jackets suit me better than the form-fitting mini-skirts and plunging necklines in, say, the Halston collection. And I’m confident that the Ralph Lauren designs will look good on women with a little more meat on their bones than the runway models. Personally, when it comes to fashion styles for women over 50, I’ll take derivative over cutting-edge vamp any day. And in response to my husband’s criticism of Ralph Lauren, I offer my favorite T.S. Elliot quote: “Good poets borrow. Great poets steal.”

Oscar de La Renta
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html?ref=fashion#/fall_10_de_la_renta/slide_show
I like many of this collection’s pieces, though not the ones with fur trim. I get hot flashes just looking at those images. On the other hand, Photo #8 makes me think of Catherine Deneuve, who is high on my list of older women fashion icons. Other favorites: #13-17

And, finally, if you’re depressed these days because your aging feet won’t allow you to wear high heels anymore, check out this CNN video: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2010/02/16/moos.fashion.falls.cnn?iref=allsearch


Photo credit: J.T White shot these photos at the Fall 2010 Fashion Week for Patrick McMullen Company.
http://www.patrickmcmullen.com/site/index.aspx
http://johntwhite.carbonmade.com/