Confessions of a Bondi Blonde

To make it in Sydney, a woman over 40 needs f….ability.

No, not that one.

Frockability. The ability to dress to impress. Whether she’s competing in the career or love stakes, a Sydney woman needs to set herself apart from the other females teetering on the slippery high rungs of the ladder, just beneath the glass ceiling.

Frockability is about dressing like you’re a success. Expensive shoes, well cut clothes and quality accessories are the core tenets and you never display cleavage unless on a hopefully warm-to-hot date. Among the legion of well dressed business women, those with frockabililty set themselves apart with their own brand of je nais se quois.

Gail Kelly has a degree of frockability. She’s stepped up from being CEO of St George and slayed the dragons of the Westpac boardroom with her sheer pizzazz. She’s now stylishly set to head up Australia’s largest bank, merging her old stiletto stamping ground with Westpac.

Julie Bishop, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, dresses with more chutzpah and intellect than the rest of the Liberal party combined. She’s a sharp talker too and her dress sense adds an edge to the debates missing in the detritus delivered by her greige leader Brendan Nelson. I’d like to add Julia Gillard, but there’s something just too lawyerly about her, no matter how great the hairstyle may be that day. I think it’s the Sandler EasyStep comfort shoes that stops her from being frockable.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley? She’s got frockability in spades. Granted, sometimes there is a frocker-shocker when she looks like her outfit has been thrown together by Helen Keller on LSD. But generally the great KAK uses her outfits for goodness instead of the evil of belittling women by showing too much flesh. She’s been around for years, is effortlessly brilliant at her job and her frockability has been key to her prolonged success.

But is the average Aussie woman over 45 frockable? I took myself off to a session at The Sydney Writer’s Festival last month to assess the frockability factor among harried housewives sweating towards the menopause mile, the majority of the book buying public.

The Bondi blonde was shocked, needing a Bex powder and a good lie down.

I was in a room of close to 200 women. About three were frockable.  Almost to a North Shore woman, there wasn’t a sexy woman there; their femininity was hidden under layers of bland clothes and Nanna knits. They had become part of the score of “invisibles”; women who raise families and unite communities while being completely ignored by the powerbrokers, except at election time.  I was in shock and awe and was drowning in a sea of wash ‘n wear haircuts, sensible shoes and shapeless brown dresses.

What is the appropriate way for an “average” woman to dress when our fertility falls? If we don’t have a position of power or authority outside our home is it OK for us to still draw attention to ourselves in a sexual or otherwise womanly way?

And in this male-run world don’t women need to understand the laws of the jungle to stay in the game? Dressing well sets an older woman apart – in career and when searching for a mate and it stops us from being eaten by the lions as sport at a Friday afternoon drinks. 

 Have you seen a photo of Patricia Field?

She’s the woman behind the look of Sex in the City. She dresses those witches of the East Village, hiding their saggy butts and bony torsos in clothes that make them beautiful, ephemeral, inspirational to me and millions of average women like me across the globe.

Ms Field has been a stand-alone international celebrity now for a decade and has styled a legion of yesterday’s wannabes into today’s brightest stars, including Anne Hathaway from The Devil Wear’s Prada and Get Smart. But for some reason, I haven’t seen a photo or an interview with her until today, when I read a recent edition Who Weekly and almost choked on my cappuccino.

For Patricia Field is a truly shocking looking woman. And I mean shocking. Not ugly. Not beautiful. Just in your face, “look at me” shocking.

In the photo accompanying the usual movie pap article, Ms Field is wearing a leopard skin mini-dress so short the world could be her gynaecologist. Her brassy medical bandage strap shoes are hooker high. Her long hair is cochineal red.

And she’s 66 years old.

Miss Field’s off-beat approach to self expression is similar to that of Italian Vogue’s muse and columnist, Anna Piaggi and echoes that of the late Isabella Blow, who discovered designer John Galliano launching him into couture heaven via the pages of British Vogue.  All three women have been celebrated as style icons way past their menopause. They knock the strictures and rules of “age appropriate dressing” into a cocked, plumed and beribboned hat.

After that late Spring lavender drenched afternoon of tea and scones and books, I thank God they do.

Since my separation I have radically invested in lots and lots of new clothes and shoes. Cheaper than therapy and lots more fun, I have reclaimed my right to dress-ups. Shuffling out of the chrysalis of wife, my new me is less moth more butterfly. I now have a range of clothes that can reflect the mood I am in. Summer day fun at the library or park with the kids?  Cream frock, pretty flats and flowers in my hair. Off to City working mum? Black frock, diamond earrings, patent shoes. Writer in crisis in coffee shop? Black skinny jeans, black woollen turtle-neck, black boots, leather jacket – black, of course.

But I did consign my black miniskirt to the Salvos bin liner. Mini skirt and over 40 knees? Even Elle couldn’t pull it off, so I read.

But Ms Field has thrown my skirt a lifeline; she said in Who Weekly that she dressed Kim Cattrall, Samantha in Sex in the City in mini-skirts because they suited her body shape. Ms Cattrall is 51. I’ve been 39 for a few years now and have a similar body shape, if not her sex life.  So I’m retrieving the mini. I’ve had the OK to wear short skirts for as long as I frocking well like.

Subscribe to Confessions of a Bondi Blonde by Email