Older Women are Lovely too: Sexy Senior Shows off Gigi’s Frillies

One of my current pet peeves is how little appreciation there is for older women. There are token advertisements that kind of acknowledge older women, but they are mostly depicted wearing stuffy older women clothing.

They can be seen in tasteful two piece suits with modest tops and boring shoes with medium height heels.

Older woman in boring two-piece.

They sometimes show them in dresses of the type one might wear to the office, and sometimes in slacks (probably stretch fabric) and Walmart style loosey-goosey knit tops.

Older lady shown in leisure clothing

These ads often depict these older women as grandmothers surrounded by their family members; as the friendly help lady at the Customer service booth, or relaxing on a deck chair at a retirement resort wearing a tasteful shorts and tee outfit.

Older lady relaxing in the sun in a modest two piece outfit

So one has to ask oneself, do these ads really represent older women as a whole? They may represent some older women, but surely not all.

What about those of us that enjoy wearing kicky outfits? What about those of us that have not yet caved to the whole “Too old to wear that or do that” thing?

Just hanging around ….

So, how old do you have to be to call it quits and go to old-lady clothing?

Is it undignified to wear punky outfits when you are over 75?

Clearly those depictions do not work for all of us. Unfortunately for me, my mind still believes that it’s in it’s 20’s while my body is 75. It underscores something one of my music teachers told me when I was having trouble keeping time. He said “Your mind is not your friend”. He was right.

Regardless of the reality, I am a makeup junkie, I love funky shoes, I love silly funky clothes and I like to follow my imagination. Accepting being old and out of it is not on my priority list.

Are these shoes too adventuresome for an elderly lady to wear? Ask me if I care.

Never one to let the grass grow under my feet, I decided to try to correct some of these mis-perceptions being generated by, who knows who.

I decided to get together with a lovely friend of ours called Julia, who owns a store in Toronto that specializes in vintage style underwear. The store is called Gigi’s House of Frills. Many lovely vintage style pieces are draped in an enticing array around the store.

We met at her store and discussed my project. Julia agreed that there is lack of older models showing off sexy lingerie. There are plenty of examples of young ones, but no older ones. It’s not like older women all wear baggy knickers made of heavy cotton and those plain cotton brassieres that used to be prevalent. Older women like to wear nice undies also.

Julia was very receptive to having older ladies modelling some of her pieces, and thus we decided to plan a photo shoot featuring her stock, featuring me as the model, proving that older ladies can rock sexy underthings.

One slight bump in the process was trying to convince my photographer husband, Bruce Walker, to be part of this project. Bruce prefers to photograph the young and the nubile and preferably professional models. They present less challenge to get into good poses, and are generally easier to photograph, requiring less specialized lighting, and a lot less retouching. Fortunately however, Bruce finally agreed, with the caveat that he wanted to be in charge of set design and lighting, as well as photography.

So Julia would supply the wardrobe, Bruce would be the set designer, lighting guy and photographer, and I would be the hairstylist, makeup artist and model. We would shoot the project at the Domanski House Studio in Mississauga which is conveniently close by.

As usual, our local used clothing and furniture stores — Salvation Army, Value Village and Talize — proved to be invaluable for picking up sundry items for the set.

These included lace curtains which Bruce used as a sideview and the pink pillows. The white rug was actually Walmart. I only managed to take fourbehind the scenes shots and these are they below.

Bruce sets up the “bedroom” and the lighting. On the right he is hanging the lace curtains that will be on the side of the bed.

From this angle you can see that this is a set, but in the shots, it looks very realistic. On the right, Julia is steaming the various lingerie pieces she has brought for the shoot.

You can see the results of our shoot below.

Old style one piece swimsuit. The shoes were a super find at Talize for only $6.00

The shoot went well, and we three had fun. Julia is a terrific stylist and picked out great items for me.

Bruce did a bang up job with the set and the lighting and the results were great.

I feel that the shots are tasteful and am not embarassed to include them in this article. I hope that they give some other older ladies the courage to do something similar. Just remember, you are as young as you feel, don’t let a creaky body slow you down.

Thanks to Julia for for helping us to spread the word about how older ladies can rock by participating in this project.

If you would like to telephone Gigi’s House of Frills it’s at (647) 748–4444 . You can visit the Facebook page (/www.facebook.com/Gigishouseoffrills)

All photos in this article are by Bruce M. Walker (www.brucewalker.com)

The model is Louise Peacock https://www.facebook.com/wtfdesignsandcreations/