Advanced style is a fashion blog turned documentary "showcasing one of fashion's most unjustly overlooked demographics: women over 60". Ari Seth Cohen founded the blog Advanced Style in August 2008. He would approach older women on the streets who he felt had a strong sense of style and would photograph them to post it on his blog.
"Reading Advanced Style, one gets the sense that the women featured see dress, as one subject puts it, as a "supportive act" – that they are, through personal style, demanding to be seen in a society that too often looks past them."
Cohen began to photograph the older women and post them on his blog because he felt that they were extremely undererpesented in the media. He wanted "to help correct what he sees as a fundamental injustice of American culture: the invisibility of older people." He talks to the women he photographs about how they feel about this issue as well; "People are living longer and we're not going to hide in the bushes." says Joyce Carpati in response.
Clothing advertisements are centered more towards teenagers as their target audience. "The focus is on youth," says Murdock flatly. "Especially in fashion." She doesn't relate to 14- and 15-year-old models in magazines. "They look like kids dressing up in their mothers' clothes." There are not many brands advertising or making products for older women. People are afraid of getting older and embracing their age so more products are being made for young people instead of for the elderly.
"In the United States now, I think we are way more into the idea of being female as a 'girly', sexy thing, rather than embracing women at every stage of life. I mean, an older woman is a 'cougar' if she tries to look good. I think here, more than in any other country that I know of, age is shunned." says Plioplyte. She is from Lithuania, where she says older people are treated with more respect.
When advertisement choose to show young women and avoid making products that embrace age they are conveying a message that the older people get the less lively and stylish the older they become, but this is not true. These women on Advanced Style have become liberated through aging.
"We all want some kind of approval," says Lynn Dell Cohen, "but I think you have to like yourself first."
"I am not afraid," says Carpati. "That's what age can do for you. It gives you a freedom! I don't care. I must sound outrageous to you, do I? I'm free."
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