For ten years, life as a fashion influencer over 50, then 60, has meant getting very comfortable with being photographed in public.
It started on the sidewalks of San Francisco when Mr. Style and I were building Style at a Certain Age one outfit post at a time. We lived on Nob Hill, close to Grace Cathedral, so it was easy to get dressed, head outside, photograph one outfit, and come home. And honestly, San Francisco gave us some glorious backdrops.
At the time, I was also working at Bloomingdale’s, so batching content wasn’t optional — it was how we made the whole thing work. And honestly, it’s still how we work today. On days when we needed to photograph several outfits, we’d head to San Francisco University, where there were plenty of beautiful backdrops to choose from — and, just as importantly, public restrooms where I could change between looks.
Very glamorous.
When we moved to Athens, the logistics changed. That’s when the changing tent came into play, along with more outfit changes in public bathrooms. Eventually we realized it was simply easier to shoot in my driveway and inside my home. I could change clothes in five minutes, walk back outside, and we were ready for the next look.
And now Atlanta has made things easy again in a completely different way. My apartment is in an urban environment, so I can get dressed, take the elevator downstairs, and suddenly we have street corners, crosswalks, brick buildings, glass towers, coffee shops, and all the movement of the city at our disposal.
It feels a little like coming full circle. San Francisco gave us those beautiful city backdrops in the beginning. Athens made shooting at home practical. And Atlanta has brought the city back into the photographs again — only now, ten years later, Jess and I know exactly what we’re doing.
Well. Most of the time.
People still stop and ask what on earth we’re doing. Sometimes they offer to take a photo of the two of us. Sometimes they hand Jess their own phone and ask her to take theirs — and every now and then, they come back for another. Jess, being Jess, is always gracious. She’ll take the picture, adjust the angle, and even give them a little posing direction before sending them on their way.
And through the years, many of you have stopped us, too — to introduce yourselves, say hello, or tell me you’ve been reading Style at a Certain Age for years. That is always such a treat. There is something very special about meeting someone in person who has been part of this community from the other side of a screen. For a few minutes, the blog becomes real in a completely different way.
Then Jess and I go right back to work.
Because what looks like a few outfit photos from the outside is really part of a much bigger story. For ten years, I’ve shared my clothes, my face, my life, and increasingly, myself, with people on the other side of a screen. And lately I’ve been thinking about what that means.
Not the clothes. Not the links. Not the algorithm. Not even the camera.
The looking.
What I’m wearing:
My Veronica Beard cardigan from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is no longer available, but I’ve linked three current Veronica Beard styles, which are a Splurge here, here, and here, along with a Sweet Spot from Tuckernuck and a Save from Caslon. I paired it with a Collared Sweater Tee, Faux Leather Trousers, Snakeprint Ballet Flats, a Suede Clutch, Solara Earrings, and my Celine Sunglasses.
If you’ve been with me since Style at a Certain Age celebrated ten years, you know how unlikely all of this was and how it all began. I was fifty-six years old. I was writing a novel. A literary agent told me that if I wanted to sell the book, I needed a platform.
So I built one. Simple, right?
Well. Somewhere along the way, the platform became the thing. Style at a Certain Age took off, the book went back into the proverbial drawer, and suddenly Mr. Style and I were spending our afternoons photographing outfits.
Life has a sense of humor.
Key Takeaways
- Ten years in front of the camera taught me the looking was never the point. What it built was the point — a community that shows up.
- Negative comments don’t get kinder over time. You get used to them. Mostly. The ones that land hardest arrive when there’s no one to hand them to.
- A viral post is a wonderful thing until one or two sour comments open the door, and then the pile-on begins — and the people piling on are almost never your readers.
What Being a Fashion Influencer Over 60 Actually Teaches You
It teaches you a few things. You learn that strangers will always have something to say about your hair, your hemline, your knees and — most recently — your eyebrows, and that the volume of it has surprisingly little to do with you. You learn that a camera is remarkably uninterested in your preferred version of reality. You learn that some people who have never met you will feel perfectly comfortable telling you what you should and should not do.
But eventually, you learn something much more important. Being visible can bring scrutiny. It can also build community. And after ten years, I know which one matters more.
But we certainly didn’t know any of that when we started.
Two People Who Had Absolutely No Idea What They Were Doing
Of course, none of this started with a grand plan to spend the next decade in front of a camera. It started with Mr. Style and me trying to figure out how to take a decent outfit photo. He was not a photographer. I was not a model. And neither one of us had the faintest idea what we were doing.
There was a lot of: “Stand there.” “No, over there.” “Wait, the light is better on this side.” “Do that again.” And inevitably: “Hang on, there’s a bus.”
I particularly love the photo with the ginormous trash cans behind me. Yep, did I mention very glamorous?
But we learned. He learned the camera. I learned how to pose without looking as though I was posing, how to find the light, how to keep a heel out of a crack in the sidewalk, and eventually how to ignore the people walking past, wondering what on earth we were up to.
Looking back, those early photos make me smile because they are not polished. Not remotely. But they are ours. We were building something together before either of us understood what it might become.
And then Oscar started wandering into the frame.
I don’t think either of us expected a German Shepherd to become one of the most popular personalities on a women’s style blog, but Oscar had other ideas. The minute he appeared, the comments lit up in a way they never had for me alone. “Where’s Oscar?” “More Oscar!” “What does Oscar think of the outfit?”
Apparently I had been upstaged by my own dog. And deservedly so.
Oscar taught me something important long before I understood it: people respond to what’s real. He wasn’t posing. He wasn’t worrying about whether the light was flattering. He was simply Oscar. And people loved him for it.
Everything That Was Apparently “Wrong”
Once you put your picture on the internet often enough, people begin to feel remarkably comfortable telling you what they think. About the outfit, certainly. But also about you. The comments come in almost neighborly, the way unsolicited advice does at church.
If I wore a skirt above the knee, someone inevitably had something to say about my knees — including the memorable opinion that old knees should never see the light of day. My gray hair made me look years older. Women my age shouldn’t wear shorts. Certain styles were only for thin women.
And one of my longtime favorites, because it’s been arriving steadily for a decade: Why do women hit fifty and think they need to cut their hair?
This one always gets me, because I cut my hair when I was seventeen. Seventeen. I’ve had some version of short hair since 1976. It was not a concession to age. It was a decision I made in high school and simply never revisited. I did not turn fifty and suddenly decide that long hair was no longer allowed. I just like short hair.
But that’s the curious thing about being a woman over a certain age in public. People tend to attach a story to your choices, whether you gave them one or not. The short hair means something. The gray hair means something. The hemline means something. And somewhere along the way, “I don’t like that outfit” can quietly turn into “There is something wrong with you” — and I’m not sure the women writing the comments ever notice the line they’ve crossed.
Most recently, someone informed me that my eyebrows needed shaping. I had to smile at that one. Little does she know, my eyebrows barely grow anymore. There isn’t much left to shape. We are working with what we have, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
Most of these comments come and go. You read them, shake your head, and move on. But every once in a while, a post travels far beyond the people who actually know you. And that is when things can get interesting.
The Shirtdress That Started a Facebook War
In April 2021, I stood on my front porch in Athens wearing a blue-and-white daisy-print shirtdress from Talbots. It was belted. There was a tulip wreath on the door behind me. Spring had arrived. If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know I have always loved a good shirtdress.
I thought this one was cheerful and fresh. A few people on Facebook thought I looked frumpy.
Fine. You don’t have to like my dress.
But then the post went viral. And all hell broke loose.
The photograph started getting shared outside my regular audience, and that’s when I learned one of the peculiar laws of social media: every share carries a post a little further from the people who know you and a little closer to the people who don’t. The farther it travels, the stranger the neighborhood becomes. It doesn’t always turn ugly. But if one or two sour comments land, it’s as though permission has been granted — and then the pile-on begins.
My readers jumped in to defend me, bless them. Then other people argued with them. Then people argued about the arguing. Before long, a perfectly innocent Talbots shirtdress had caused something close to a Facebook civil war. Facebook is particularly talented at this.
The comments became personal. Some were downright vicious. And for the first time, I seriously considered shutting down my Facebook account.
Over a shirtdress. Think about that for a minute.
Eventually, I closed the laptop. The noise moved on to somebody else. I was still here. So was Style at a Certain Age.
And yes, I still like shirtdresses.
The Year I Kept Smiling
The hardest photographs I have ever taken are the ones where I look perfectly fine.
When Mr. Style was diagnosed with cancer, we kept the news private for more than a year. That was his decision. It was his diagnosis, his life, and his story to tell when — and if — he was ready.
So I kept doing what I did every week. I got dressed. I put on my lipstick. I stepped in front of the camera. And I smiled. Outfit posts. Photographs. Videos. Business as usual.
Except, of course, nothing was usual. And somehow the camera knew. More importantly, you knew.
Readers began writing to me. “Beth, you seem sad.” “You don’t quite seem like yourself.” “Is everything okay?” You didn’t know what was happening. But you knew something was happening.
Eventually, when he was ready, we shared what was happening.
That period taught me something about photographs I have never forgotten. You can style your clothes. You can fix your hair. You can put on lipstick and smile when someone says, “Ready?” But you cannot always style your face. Sometimes the people who have been paying attention see right through it. And the camera never lies.
Someone in Your Corner
All of this was easier when Mr. Style was alive. And I don’t just mean taking the photographs.
He was my sounding board. When someone left a nasty comment that got under my skin, I would read it to him. He would look at me over his glasses and say: “Why would you let a complete stranger’s opinion bother you?”
Which was both deeply irritating and completely correct. That was Mr. Style. I would grumble. He would shrug. And somehow the comment would shrink back to its proper size.
That is one of the things you don’t fully appreciate about having someone in your corner until they’re no longer there. You get to hand them things. The hurt feelings. The ridiculous comment. The decision you’re second-guessing. The worry that woke you up at three in the morning. You hand it over for a minute, and someone who loves you hands back perspective.
After he died, the negative comments landed differently. There was no longer anyone sitting across the room for me to say, “Listen to what this person said.” I had to learn to be my own sounding board — which sounds nice and tidy written down and was neither of those things in practice.
But I did. Not overnight. Not gracefully every single time. But I did.
These days? C’est la vie. You simply cannot spend more than a decade in the public eye and give every stranger with a keyboard a vote. Most of it rolls right off my shoulders now. Mostly. Every once in a while, something catches me on the wrong day. I’m human.
And here’s the thing nobody warns you about: the same rule applies to the good comments. I appreciate every kind word more than you know — but you never want any of it to go to your head. I’m a Midwest girl. I will always appreciate two feet planted firmly on the ground. Mr. Style understood this all too well, which is why he insisted from the very first outfit post that Style at a Certain Age was a business, run on business principles. Not a mirror. Not a popularity contest. A business. Praise and criticism both get read, both get weighed, and neither one gets to run the place.
But I’ve gotten very good at remembering something Mr. Style understood all along: not every opinion deserves real estate in your head. The mean ones or the nice ones.
Handing Over the Camera
When I look back at the past ten years, I realize the story isn’t really about the woman standing in front of the camera. It’s about the people standing behind it.
First there was Mr. Style. Two people who had no idea what they were doing, figuring it out together one photo at a time.
Then my son Christian stepped behind the lens. Today, Christian runs my YouTube channel and oversees video for Style at a Certain Age.
There’s something very special about being filmed by your son.
He knows I’ve blown a line before I’ve admitted it, and he’ll tell me when a take is really, really bad.
Ten years in, I still flub lines regularly. There’s a blooper reel in here somewhere.
But he sees me not just as Beth Djalali standing in front of a camera, but as his mom.
I think that shows.
And then there’s Jess. Jess has been a godsend. I absolutely love working with her. She’s the one walking backward down Atlanta sidewalks while I walk toward her. She’s the one calling, “One more!” And somehow convincing me that yes, there really does need to be one more.
Since I started spending more time in Atlanta, our photography has taken on a whole new energy. Street corners. Crosswalks. Brick buildings. Glass towers. Cars. People. Movement. Life happening around us.
And every once in a while, a stranger stops. “What are you doing?”
Ten years later, I still don’t have a particularly good answer. Maybe I don’t need one.
Closing Thoughts
Ten years of being looked at has taught me something I never expected when Mr. Style and I picked up that first camera. The looking was never the point. What it built was the point.
This community. The women who noticed something was wrong before I had said a word. The women who went to battle over my daisy shirtdress — and while I don’t recommend engaging in Facebook warfare on my behalf, I loved you for it. The women who have been widowed. Divorced. Diagnosed. Retired. Reinvented. Heartbroken. Newly in love. Starting over at fifty, sixty, seventy, and beyond. The women who show up here and remind one another that life keeps moving — and so do we. And the women who have read this far and are already composing the comment that starts, “Beth, I’ve been there.”
The strangers will continue to wander in. Some of them will undoubtedly have thoughts about my hair. Or my knees. Or my eyebrows. Good heavens, perhaps next week we’ll move on to my elbows.
Let them.
Because after ten years, I know the difference between being looked at and being seen. And all of you? You have seen me. Through Mr. Style’s camera. Through Christian’s. Through Jess’s. Through some of the happiest years of my life and some of the hardest. And that has been one of the greatest gifts of this very unexpected journey.
Style has no expiration date. And neither do you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Mostly wonderful. Occasionally ridiculous. Every once in a while, brutal. You build an extraordinary community of women who show up for one another — and you also encounter complete strangers who feel surprisingly invested in your hair, your hemline, your knees, and apparently your eyebrows. After ten years, I can tell you without hesitation which group matters.
Much better than I used to. Most comments roll right off these days because I’ve finally learned that a stranger’s opinion is exactly that: an opinion. Every once in a while one catches me on a bad day. When that happens, I close the laptop, go live my actual life, and come back when the comment has returned to its proper size. Usually very small.
Because it was his story. He wasn’t ready to share his diagnosis publicly, and I respected that. We kept it within our family for more than a year. Eventually, readers began noticing that I seemed sad even though I was smiling in photographs. When we were ready, we shared what was happening.
Jess photographs the blog and much of our social content, and my son Christian runs the YouTube channel and oversees video at Style at a Certain Age. In the early years, Mr. Style was behind the camera — first in San Francisco and later in Athens. Every photographer has brought something different to Style at a Certain Age, which is part of what makes looking back through ten years of photographs so special.
Yes, I do. I may not see every single comment on every platform anymore — Style at a Certain Age has grown considerably over the years — but I read far more of them than people probably realize. And I especially love hearing from the women who have been with me for years. You’ve become part of the story too.
Shop the Post
Browse my full ShopMy storefront for fashion, beauty, home, and everything currently catching my eye.
The Cardigan
The Veronica Beard cardigan I’m wearing came from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale and is unfortunately no longer available. But I found several current options that give you the same polished fall look at different price points.
Splurge: Veronica Beard Cardigan · Veronica Beard Cardigan · Veronica Beard Cardigan
Sweet Spot: Tuckernuck Cardigan
Save: Caslon Cardigan
The Rest of the Look
Before You Go
After writing this, I keep coming back to Mr. Style asking me why I would give a complete stranger’s opinion so much power. It took me a few years, but I finally got the message.
So I’m curious: Who’s in your corner? Who is the person who can take something that feels enormous and hand it back to you at its proper size?
Or, since we might as well have a little fun: what is the most “helpful” piece of unsolicited advice someone has ever given you about your appearance? I have a feeling we could fill an entire comment section with that one.
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