The Rise of the Over-50 Fashion Mentors (Published 2022)

The modern closet was initially a private space, where items could be hidden from public view. But it has been steadily reconceived as a repository of potential and dreams, a place from which a “true” self can emerge.

This is a different kind of aspiration than the one found in closet tours of young influencers and celebrities. Many of those figures seem focused on stockpiling luxury brands and reacting to trends. Part of why Rockmore and Woodall feel so reassuring is that, like all cool older people, they seem comfortably past all that, as though they’ve a... See more

Rather than mocking her for sticking around past her supposed sell-by date, online audiences — even on teenager-heavy TikTok — love her for it. She is, in fact, one of a handful of over-50 fashion mentors on social media to attract an all-ages crowd.

Wealth plays a part in their charm. There has always been a tendency, as both men and women age, to replace the appeals of youth with the appeal of money; when you may no longer impress the world by looking fresh and dewy, you can impress by looking formidably wealthy.

Now, social media allows anyone to dig into her wardrobe and explain an intimate self to a public. There is, accordingly, no dearth of women and girls making jump-cut videos of their outfits. If Rockmore’s years set her apart, it’s not because she looks good “for her age,” whatever that means; it is because, at 54, she is very much dressing for fun... See more

50-year-old women tend to know who they are and what they want. They are not alien to their own lives, roaming around confused about how everything got to be the way it is now, as if freshly emerged from cryogenic chambers.

And yet what they offer is not simply a fantasy of wealth itself. It is the fantasy of a well-lived life — the sense of having reached a place of power and inhabiting it comfortably. In a landscape where women their age are portrayed as either powerless and pitiful or powerful and despised, this feels revelatory.