'Fabulous Fashionistas' Review - Six Ladies' Love Of Life Provides Inspiration For Viewers Of All Ages

REVIEW: Fashionistas Provide Fabulous Inspiration For All Ages

Six 'Fabulous Fashionistas' with the average age of 80 brought a breath of fresh air to the night's viewing, and a stunning antidote to all those boring, cloned orange women we usually see.

All six had tasted much sweetness, but also sorrow along the way, but they were buggered if they were going to sit and ruminate about such things when there was life to be lived.

Gillian Lynne is still working as a choreographer at 87

Blessed with collective good health, style and lots and lots of attitude, all six had found different ways to arrive at their current joyful perches.

Jean had lost her husband after a blissful half-century, and found herself behind the counter in Gap, giving customers the benefit of her sartorial wisdom and giving Daphne, the country's oldest model at 85, a run for her money in the style stakes with her fringe.

Jean found herself behind the counter of Gap in her 70s

Equally colourful was Sue, whose mantra is "Don't wear beige, it might kill you." Staying alive instead involved living in a world colourful all the way down to her scarlet crocs. "I don't want to go over the top," she said, wandering around the shops looking like a cross between Dame Edna and Liberace.

Two of these ladies were familiar faces. Gillian Lynne, well-known forever as the legging-ed choreographer of 'Cats', is still in the same leotard at an UNBELIEVABLE 87. Her great reward? Marriage to a tomboy, at which many an observer frowned at the time. "Everyone who disapproved has either died, or looks silly," she said triumphantly. Of the ageing process, she had a simple instruction to impart… 'DONT' LET IT IN.'

All six had valuable lessons to impart, to women - and men - of all ages

And 91-year-old Baroness Trumpington is an internet sensation, after dropping a V-sign to another peer in the House of Lords. She personified 'indomitable', giving some of the slightly patronising questions the contempt they deserved, and stopping to peruse her beloved catalogues. I loved the way she relished a bargain, and the words "twenty five quid for a jacket's not bad".

But my favourite of all was Bridget, proving at 75 that style does not demand wealth, with the proudest of her charity shop purchases a pair of £4 Doc Martens, and her decision to be a model as well, "as a political statement, really".

Without a Botox injection or a fake tan in sight, each of these ladies were an inspiration in themselves. And, by concentrating on this usually ignored community, Channel 4 gave a whole handful of life lessons to its viewers, male and female. Of any age. Bravo!

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