There is nothing on Earth that has a limited shelf-life quite like fashion, so for a documentary to focus on a group of older ladies, and their capacity for still possessing forward-thinking style, it'll obviously raise a lot of questions. Can you be 'too old' to still be 'in fashion'? Is style something that can go beyond an age range, or should certain styles be sectioned off to different age brackets? And will these old age parishioners of design be accepted for what they are, or just viewed as being slightly loony?
Lina Plioplye's movie, based on the blog by the heavily featured Ari Seth Cohen, doesn't really delve too deeply into these questions, though. Instead the movie is more than happy to put these ladies up on a pedestal, merely for having the courage to still dress the want they want to dress. Focusing in on seven fashionistas in New York, aged from 62 to 95, it is impressive just how vital these women have remained over the decades. Referring to them is youthful feels reductive, as the confidence they've maintained is something that only comes with age, and after spending time in their company, you will grow to love these ladies.
And while Plioplye's movie does a good job of getting to know these ladies, it fails at telling us why this phenomenon seems to exist solely in New York, solely in females (there are NO fashionable older men?), and what the general public seems to think of them? We get one or two talking heads early on, and one or two nice comments from passers-by on the streets, but there's very little subjectivity here. Cohen, and by extension, Plioplye seem to have reached the foregone conclusion that these are fantastically stylish older ladies, and they expect the audience to just take that as fact, too. And even at a smidge over the hour mark, the subject matter feels stretched.
Still though, this is far from a forty year cast reunion of Sex & The City, and even for those who have no real interest in fashion, Advanced Style does a better job of showing the ever-present potential of a generation that may have been unfairly sidelined.
