Greetings Steemians,

I am enjoying my morning bucket of coffee this fine Saturday morning in Placencia, Belize.

I have a bit of a head cold and cough from an allergic reaction to the sargassum (seaweed) which has clogged up our shores lately - so am a bit under the weather today, so to speak.

I was surfing through news today and stumbled upon an article about Ines de la Fressange - a French Chanel model from the 1970s. Reading that she was 61 kind of surprised me. This is because sometimes I often forget how old I am - which is 52, so naturally the icons who inspired me in the 1980s and 1990s will be thirty years older.

Inès now runs her own label in Paris, designs regular collections for Uniqlo, has written six more books, and is an ambassador for shoe designer Roger Vivier. She can pick and choose her projects. The latest, fronting a female-focused initiative for a hotel chain, caught her attention because she's sick of staying in hotel rooms designed for businessmen.(Source: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/in-s-de-la-fressange-redefining-the-notion-of-age-appropriate-dressing-20180905-p501v6.html)

Okay, so De La Fressange had a lot of advantages the average punter doesn't have - firstly she won the genetic lottery and was a Chanel model in her 20s but she has continued to parlay those early experiences into a successful business in her seventh decade. And like most people she has had her share of challenges including a divorce and raising children. However she could have easily thrown those opportunities away by developing a raging coke addiction to maintain her weight, to give one example of celebrity burnout. It is a breath of fresh air to see someone like De La Fressange featured in an article compared with the vacuousness of the celebro-spawn and Kardashians with their bulging silicon breasts and amply booty. I am mindful that there is a serious PR machine behind the Kardashians with their "Momagers" and their Insta feeds to funnel their tedium which continues to be consumed en masse by the hapless youth of today - yep I sound like an old person saying that, I know. But money does not buy style, so consider these images:

Ines in the 1980s modelling for Chanel

Ines in her 60s

The 1980s image shows a woman with full lips and a plumper face which you would expect of a girl in her early 20s. But now in her 60s she is still strikingly, beautiful but it is the life experience etched on her face that delivers that beauty:

Clearly De La Fressange has been living a quiet, understated life in France combined with the savvy of a successful businesswoman. There is not a shred of lip filler to be seen.

Ageing is a curious thing. Its not a bad thing and certainly better than the alternative. I still have similar energy levels to what I had in my 30s. I can still do a spin class or a pump class, no problems, however here in Belize there are no decent gyms so I have had to improvise.

Even though I have had a lot of stress in my life, particularly the past decade with a nasty divorce and the loss of my children, I have had to push through this and engage in self-care which translates to eating well, getting plenty of sleep and surrounding myself with positive people. I don't smoke and I don't drink alcohol and I think this makes a massive difference as well. And you should continue to embrace ageing and look at it with curiosity and gratitude rather than complaining about your aches and pains. I have an auto-immune disease which I manage quite easily. My cousin (who just turned 60) who also has a number of auto-immune diseases (coelic et al) made a rather amusing observation one day about this "Well our ancestors must have had strong immune systems to survive the Plague, smallpox and so on in Europe - centuries ago, and our immunity we have inherited from them - is working just that little bit harder for us." If it wasn't for that, we wouldn't be here. Gratitude trumps everything.

This was just an article reflecting upon one of my favourite fashion influences when I was a young girl reading Vogue in a small country town in South Western New South Wales, Australia in the 1980s. So much has changed for me since then.

Me and my beloved driving across America