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The 13 style rules that every midlife woman MUST follow (and yes, beige really is banned!)
Shoes are your secret weapon, for ever
There's nothing you can't wear on your feet for ever (though your ideal heel height may come down and, personally, I'd give Mary Janes a swerve). More to the point you can and should get maximum Wow points from your footwear whether that's a leopard-print kitten heel or a wooden-soled sandal.
Ever since Prada did velvet platform sandals, several years ago, platforms and wedges have shed their glam rock image and become acceptable year-round at any age – quirky, leg lengthening and great for those occasions when you're on your feet for hours. Just keep them more on the Prada scale than Noddy from Slade.
50+ means: Finding the shoe that keep's you looking like a fashion contender.
It may be time to bow out
I'd love to say you can still get away with a giant organza bow at the neck or a big bow on the back of a dress or a fat bow on some flat pumps or lots of sparkly crystal bows running down the front of a dress (hold it ... that may not be forbidden, if we're talking about a Saloni dress) but ninety nine percent of bows are in the Baby Jane category.
Instead of bows at the throat, get serious about scarves, either silk squares tied in the French manner in the neck of your shirt or wrap around big cotton or wool scarves. They add texture and colour and they cover up imperfections from necks to upper arms.
50+ means: Fewer bows, more scarves.
Edwardian garden silk scarf in cornflower blue, £150, aspinaloflondon.com
That girl with a pearl earring was onto something
Pearls flatter the skin and do something mysteriously illuminating to the complexion. We've shied away from them for decades but now we're in a pearls with everything moment.
Interlocking flower earrings, £295, gucci.com
Vintage black pearl, £125, susancaplan.co.uk
You can find pearl earrings and necklaces everywhere from Accessorize to Gucci.
50+ means: Upping the impact of jewellery and wearing it more of the time.
Sort out your specs
It's odd that we can spend weeks shopping for the right dress to wear to the wedding and then turn up on the day in six-year-old specs that dull the glamour by roughly sixty per cent. Look at the pictures of the King's Coronation, Oscar Night, Victoria Beckham's 50th, what do they all have in common?
Gillian Anderson in New York last month, who has curated her glasses to work with her outfit
Few of the women are wearing glasses, and if they are they're curated to work with their outfit. Some of us have yet to investigate contact lenses, but it's an oversight. Bring out your eyes from behind your smeary specs, at least for special occasions, and you will look ten years younger.
50+ means: Working your specs or ditching them. (See Gillian Anderson)
Scallop swimsuit, £35, marksandspencer.com
Take your underwear seriously
The state of your bra makes all the difference now: bra bulge and bra sag (when a bra has given up the job of supporting) are two absolutely unnecessary consequences of not wearing the right fit. Everything to do with underwear matters 100 per cent more as you enter your fifties.
As a general rule deliberately visible underwear – either under something sheer or peeking out – is no longer a good idea. The exception is in summer when you can wear the bikini tops you no longer wear on the beach on show under linen shirts. A good plain black swimsuit can also double as a body on holiday. (See Nancy Shevell)
50+ means: Properly fitted underwear.
With jeans you must never rest on your laurels
Mom jeans, £45, riverisland.com
There's the classic Levi 501s, which officially never date, but isn't all that easy to wear in real life. Otherwise you need to be ready to switch up your denims regardless of whether or not you've found your perfect forever shape.
Fashion never sleeps and if you ignore the march of jeans you will get left behind (witness the predicted swing from baggy boyfriend styles to skinnies). If you do one thing and one thing only keep a close eye on the current jeans shape and adapt accordingly.
50+ means: Moving with the denim times. (See Kristin Scott Thomas or Julia Roberts)
Bye bye black leather biker
Your black leather biker jacket, however much fun you had in it, must be handed on. There's no 'what if' with this (you can hang on for a bit if it's olive green or brown but there are better answers out there). The cool looks that we used to aim for are now just hard and ageing and the whole rock-chick vibe is very high risk since the foundation of rock 'n' roll style is a certain unkemptness which is incompatible with grown-up dressing. We've all seen it, some of us in the mirror. One day you are channelling late-period Blondie, the next you look like you've just got out of bed after a hair-raising bout of flu. It's fine to look casual but now we need to look polished too. It's all over for scruffy.
50+ means: Lots more grooming and swapping biker leather for soft tan sheepskin.
It pays to find the one surprising thing that really suits you... in spite of your age
Maybe it's a jumpsuit, or white denim flares when you're 63 (see Julianne Moore at last year's Cannes film festival). There is a whole category of clothes (much bigger than the ones you need to put away post 50) called Score Extra Points for Looking Good In These Post 50.
Maybe you suit tank tops with bare arms? Maybe you have the legs for city shorts or you happen to look terrific in a plunging decollete.
50+ means: Finding your Unexpected Good Look and working it hard.
Bring on the black and white
Julianne Moore at a photocall for her film May December at Cannes in 2023
Some people can do black for ever, depending on their colouring (washed out blondes less so), but everyone now benefits from a black lifter – whether it's a leopard bag strap, a bold brooch or necklace or a cuff (see Jamie Lee Curtis on Oscar night). Black needs blinging up post 50.
As for white, it looks best as a foil for black or a block colour – a white collar or a white top with a leopard print skirt but a plain white dress not so much (unless it's on holiday with a dark pink tie dye wrap and red espadrilles). White and black look better together now than apart.
50+ means: Blinging up black.
Just say no to pedal pushers
For some reason midlife women are drawn to pedal pushers. We looked hot in them in the early 1980s and they're amazingly flattering, we think, but no. Pedal pushers are on the list of clothes that have a half life and are best avoided after 50.
Capri trousers, £59, phase-eight.com
Also on this list are Bardot off-the- shoulder necklines, peasant tops, tiered dresses, miniskirts and high-collared dresses. It's perfectly fine to bare some back or cleavage or whatever you're in the mood for, it's the girlish styles that do for you and too much coverage can be as bad as too little.
50+ means: Trousers cropped above the ankle not below the knee.
Turbo charge your colours
Check dress, £119, phase-eight.com
This is an interesting one because of course everyone is different, but the older you get, the more bold colour does for you and the less well served you are by shades of brown and olive, beige and grey. Pastels do fifty-plusers no favours – switch your baby blue for butterfly turquoise, your primrose yellow for canary – and muted minimalism is wasted on us. Swap the barely visible gold earring for a sparkler.
Striped cotton shirt, £160, jasperconran.com
Get your subtly striped shirt in white on forget-me-not blue. Give away your pale pink floral print dress and wear an emerald green zinger and red shoes, or the other way around. You get zero points for subtlety in these years.
50+ means: Trying new colours.
Cuzima sneakers, £140, gant.co.uk
Ruching and other tricks
A dress with a line of ruching down the torso is one of those tricks that allows you to wear body con clothes into your sixties and beyond. Likewise, bracelet and elbow length sleeves keep your arms covered while exposing just enough skin to keep the look light and summery. (Long sleeved dresses can look odd in summer.) Turn up the cuffs of a shirt and push them up and you instantly look fresher.
50+ means: Wrists and feet out in summer.
Ruched mini dress, £228, reiss.com
Fascinator, £74.25, karenmillen.com
Beware the ageing hat
Might Meghan have exited the Royal Family because she looked bad in a hat? Just a theory, but the wrong hat does have the ability to frump you up and age you faster than a surgical boot. For instruction on how to wear a hat (not least because it comes from the brilliant milliner Philip Treacy), it pays to look at the Queen. It also pays to avoid wide-brimmed picture hats and instead go for the small saucer on the side look, or get yourself a grade up from a fascinator. Think Prime Minister's wife Akshata Murty at the King's coronation.
50+ means: Neater hats.