The Five Outfit Formulas That Still Work After Fifty

Somewhere after fifty, most of us stop dressing to be noticed and start dressing to feel like ourselves. That's not a smaller ambition — it's a harder one, because it means the clothes have to actually work.

The first formula is a long coat over a column of one colour. Same shade top and bottom, coat open. It's the oldest trick there is and it still does more for a silhouette than anything you can buy.

The second is a knit and a good trouser, with one thing that has weight — a real belt, a proper shoe, a bag that stands up on its own. The knit can be soft; something else has to be firm.

Third: a shirt dress with sleeves you can push up. It reads as effort without being effortful, and it's the only dress that works for a lunch, a school run and a gallery in the same day.

Fourth is the two-piece that isn't a suit. Matching fabric, unstructured, worn apart as often as together. You'll get more wear out of it than anything else you own.

And fifth — the one people resist — is a flat shoe with a hem that ends at the narrowest part of your leg. Not a heel, a hem. Almost everything people blame on shoes is actually a hem.