Senior Moments: ‘Advanced Style’ A Compelling Look at Women Who Make Fashion Their Own

Ilona Royce Smithkin, a woman of a certain age (OK, she’s 93), is getting ready to go out for the day and takes great care putting on very long, bright red fake eyelashes she made herself — from her own hair. That’s what happens when you outlive the man who used to make them for you.

Smithkin, along with several other women is the subject of Advanced Style, a documentary based on the successful blog of the same name by Ari Seth Cohen, and produced by Cohen and first-time director Lina Plioplyte. It profiles a few of the many older women Cohen regularly accosts on the street who dress stylishly, and often, eccentrically.

The women featured in the film are instantly captivating and their feeling of liberation from the constraints of youth and responsibility even enviable. These women do not subscribe to the vagaries of contemporary fashion, rather, they invent their own.

Ari Seth Cohen seated with one of the women he has profiled in his blog, Advanced Style, which became the inspiration for the documentary of the same name.

Together, they remind us that growing older isn’t just about calcium deficiencies or occasional memory loss, but that growing old offers a freedom from the style rules that most of us spend so many decades trying to follow. These women feel great about themselves — both as women and senior citizens. “I used to never tell people my age, I’d say I was between 50 and death,” confesses Smithkin, whose human hair eyelashes are so long she needs to tilt her head up to see the camera.

Granted, this is Manhattan, and the film doesn’t delve too deeply into any of these women’s financial constraints or their struggles with Medicare. Still it’s clear that all of the women enjoy improvisation, such as one woman who proudly shows off her cuff bracelets made of toilet paper cores.

“I think good style improves the environment for everybody,” says Zelda Kaplan, who at 95 still managed to draw plenty of attention in her head-to-toe colorful ensembles, replete with turban.

Royce Smithkin, Joyce Carpati, and Lynn Dell are just three of the seven stylish women profiled in the documentary, Advanced Style.

Cohen and Plioplyte met in 2008 and almost instantly began exploring the idea of a blog, and later videos documenting the lives of what Cohen calls, “stylish seniors.” The two eventually created a Kickstarter campaign which enabled them to make Advanced Style for under $50,000.

The documentary covers roughly four years in the lives of these women and we quickly begin to see how Cohen’s blog and the recognition it brings begins to transform their confidence, and in some cases, even their egos.

84-year old Jackie Tajah Murdock as seen in a recent Lanvin campaign, which featured “real people” as opposed to professional models. Cohen’s Advanced Style blog brought her the kind of fame she had always wanted. “I am the face of Lanvin.”

In one scene, 84-year old Jackie Tajah Murdock, a former dancer during the golden age of Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, is chosen to be included in a Lanvin campaign. “I am the face of Lanvin,” Murdock tells a reporter. “Well, one of the faces,” says one of the other ladies, to which Murdock retorts, “No, they chose me as the face of Lanvin.”

Cohen’s adoration and respect for these women is palpable, and the women dote on him and come alive the moment he comes into the room. “Ari, are you coming to my party?” says 81-year-old Lynn Dell, who owns New York’s Off Broadway boutique, a store that seems to supply most of these women with their fabulous get-ups.

The more junior of the ensemble is Tziporah Salamon, 64, who is already a style icon in her own right and frequently photographed by Bill Cunningham and Iké Udé. In some ways, she is like a shadow of the older women’s’ former selves: talented, ambitious, and maybe always a bit off the grid in how she interacts with the world. These are women who came into their own at a late age, when the world of men and motherhood is thankfully, far less important.

And this is what makes all of these women so remarkable, and so dazzling: their courage to live rich and colorful lives despite their age, to make each day a celebration. It is a lesson that many of us will perhaps only discover when we too are old — that we wasted too many years worrying about what other people think, and dressing like someone else rather than like ourselves.

>> Advanced Style opens tomorrow, September 26 at New York City’s Quad Cinemas, and in select theaters across the country starting in October. Find out where at advancedstylethemovie.com.

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