A Nostalgic Reflection on Fashion and Individuality
Sitting in a café recently, indulging in one of life’s great pastimes — subtle people-watching, I noticed something. As young women walked past, in groups or alone, they all looked fantastic. Wide-leg jeans. Crisp white sneakers. Oversized blazers. Sleek middle parts. Neat handbags. Polished. Effortless. Put together. And yet, almost without exception, they looked exactly the same.
In the days that followed, I found myself feeling grateful that I grew up in the fashion chaos of the late 1970s, 80s and 90s. It was a time when young women looked wildly different from one another and no algorithm was quietly nudging us toward the same outfit.
Talking to girlfriends and fellow 60-plus style mavens, there’s a shared sense that when we were finding our way, fashion wasn’t a template. It was an adventure. You didn’t curate your style. You stumbled into it.
Back then, there were tribes everywhere. Music and certainly music videos shaped fashion just as much as fashion shaped us. One friend summed it up perfectly when we were reminiscing. “We had lots of ‘uniforms’ to choose from — punks, New Wavers, disco girls, retro 1950s looks, arty alternatives, Princess Di types. You picked the tribe that suited your personality.”
“When I went to Europe for the first time in 1990, every country had its own style. Today everything is so homogeneous, thanks to the internet.” And sometimes you didn’t pick a tribe at all. You invented your own.
Op shops, then as now, were treasure troves. One girlfriend was and still is a masterful op-shopper and always looked unique and put together for next to nothing. Looking unique, she believes, has become harder, not just in fashion, but in how we present ourselves more broadly.
She’s critical of the way social media has influenced young women to alter their faces with fillers, dental whitening, rhinoplasty and Botox. “Once upon a time, cosmetic surgery was something old Hollywood stars indulged in — not young people with perfectly good skin and features. It’s sad. Everyone’s starting to look the same.”
In the pre-social media era, you might buy a man’s suit jacket with an electric-blue lining, dye your hair an alarming shade of red and cut it like Lady Di — as I did and experiment wildly with makeup. Somehow, that became your look for a year. No one was photographing it. No one was judging it online. If you made a terrible fashion decision, the only witnesses were your friends and whoever you happened to pass you in the street.
By the 1980s, subtlety had disappeared entirely. Fashion was loud, joyful and slightly ridiculous. Shoulder pads gave you the silhouette of a rugby player. Hair was shellacked into submission. Perms were everywhere. I made one particularly memorable mistake: already sporting a perfectly good short bob, I decided it would be an excellent idea to get a perm.
Image: Supplied.
It was not. What followed was less “effortless volume” and more tightly coiled Afro chaos — proof, if any were needed, that good judgement and 1980s hair trends were not always compatible.
Some of us went through a full Madonna phase: lace gloves, visible roots, layered necklaces and a faintly rebellious attitude. Other days, we channelled the polished glamour of the Sloane Ranger look — structured jackets, romantic blouses and bold colour. And somehow, all of it could exist in the same room without anyone thinking it strange.
Then the 1990s came and swung the pendulum again, giving us minimalism and grunge. Combat boots. Slip dresses. Oversized men’s shirts. Distressed denim. Some leaned into the effortless cool of Kate Moss. Others embraced the darker edge of Winona Ryder.
Catherine Bauer (wearing hat). Image: Supplied.
And the joy of it was this: we tried everything. Fashion felt fluid. Experimental and free. We wore things that made perfect sense at the time and look utterly baffling now, but every experiment taught us something. We learnt what to keep, what to refine and what to quietly retire forever.
My generation made terrible fashion mistakes. But at least they were our own. There was no permanent digital record. No comment section. No social media steering millions of women toward the same look.
Of course, imitation in fashion isn’t new. Australian stylist Nicole Bonython-Hines, who has worked in the industry for more than four decades, says young people have always looked to others when shaping their style.
Nicole Bonython-Hines. Image: Instagram/@nbonython.
“There’s often a psychological reason people dress similarly — fitting in, peer acceptance, not wanting to stand out,” she explains. “Even in my own generation, people copied each other.” But there was one crucial difference. “Back then, there wasn’t cheap fast fashion everywhere. If you wanted something unique, you often had to find it or make it yourself.” That effort created individuality.
And individuality is something I sometimes worry is quietly disappearing. Adelaide art connoisseur Diana Jaquillard, known for her distinctly individual style, is unapologetically direct. “My advice for anyone wanting a unique look is simple: start with your own body,” she says. “Dress for your shape, your colouring, your proportions — not for trends. Too many women wear clothes that don’t flatter them, whether it’s the cut, the fabric or the colour.”
Diana Jaquillard. Image: Instagram/@dianajaquillard
She’s equally clear about what she avoids. “I dislike blue jeans and never wear them. They’ve become an unimaginative uniform — fine for gardening perhaps, but not for expressing any real sense of style.” And while many aspire to luxury labels, Diana isn’t convinced. “I don’t aspire to designer brands like Chanel or Louis Vuitton. I find their ready-to-wear pieces very predictable — and all those logos? Boring and, frankly, a little pretentious.”
Instead, she sees opportunity. “There are so many designers online now that there’s no excuse to rely on the same run-of-the-mill boutiques. It’s far more interesting and far more fun to seek out creative pieces and build something that feels entirely your own.”
The idea that style is something personal, expressive, even a little rebellious, feels increasingly rare. Adelaide woman Meridy Dunn, whose Instagram @groovygreylook describes her as an “over 60s fashion and sewing enthusiast”, puts it beautifully.
Meridy Dunn. Image: Instagram/@groovygreylook
“There’s lots of white, beige and black. It’s stylish, but sometimes it tells you very little about the person wearing it,” she says. “I think people should feel comfortable in their clothing choices. Some are too anxious to try something new for fear of criticism.”
That comment stayed with me. Because style used to be a kind of visual autobiography. Your clothes told a story. Today, social media often encourages something different: a single aesthetic that is polished, mistake-proof and camera-ready. It looks beautiful. But it leaves less room for glorious mishaps. And it turns out, mistakes are how style actually forms.
Over time, those experiments accumulate. You learn which colours make you feel strong. Which silhouettes suit your body. Which trends you enjoy borrowing from and which you’re happy to ignore. By the time I reached my forties and fifties, those years of chaotic experimentation had done something invaluable. They had built confidence.
At 60, I no longer dress to impress anyone. I dress to feel like myself. Some days that means something simple and tailored. Other days it means something slightly unexpected for someone of my “age”, something that reminds me of the girl I was in the 1980s, rummaging through racks and trying on identities.
Because style, at its best, isn’t about perfection. It’s about identity. It’s about trying on different versions of yourself until one of them feels true. The women who seem most interesting later in life rarely followed a single template. They collected pieces of themselves across decades.
So, when I watch young women today moving through the world in their beautifully curated outfits, I feel both admiration and curiosity. They look wonderful. But I hope that somewhere along the way, they allow themselves the freedom to look a little ridiculous too. To try something unexpected. To wear the jacket that feels slightly too dramatic. To experiment without worrying whether the internet approves. Because the real joy of style lies in discovering who you are when you stop trying to look like everyone else.
And for that, I will always be grateful for the glorious fashion chaos of my earlier decades and, at 60, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
