The laid-back charm of octogenarian style

My granda Harry, an 85-year-old northern English mechanic, would not describe himself as a fashionable man. Nevertheless, my style as an early-thirtysomething has been slowly morphing into his for a while; last year, I even bought us matching waxed cotton bucket hats. Harry’s sartorial mainstays include a dark green anorak with a corduroy collar, baggy trousers and a short-sleeve camp-collar shirt, usually worn with polished Derby shoes or chunky black trainers. It’s essentially the wardrobe of any trendy millennial living in Hackney. 

“It’s day-to-day casual,” he says of the aesthetic he’s been repping for 50 years, mostly bought from Marks and Spencer by my grandma. “I’m comfortable. I don’t think I’m too old-fashioned. I’m more in the trend of the time.”

Bang on. It’s a fact that many of today’s young are gravitating towards clothes typically worn by the middle-aged and beyond. First there were “mom” jeans. Then came the dad era, which began a bit ironically around 2018 with the ugly sneaker, but has since morphed into a fashion category of its own. On TikTok, #grandpacore — a trend describing clobber synonymous with seniors, such as V-neck novelty knits, pleat-front trousers and tweed blazers — has had almost 16mn views.

“There’s now a zeitgeisty cottage industry that exists around the aesthetic appeal of the nonchalant, geriatric dresser, who wears New Balance or Birkenstock because he needs the orthopaedic support,” says Lawrence Schlossman, founder of the New York menswear podcast Throwing Fits. 

Nick Wakeman, founder of London-based brand Studio Nicholson, is such a fan of pensioner fashion that she has an exhibition dedicated to it. Running until June 4 in her east London studio, it’s created in partnership with Gramparents, an Instagram account run by Kyle Kivijärvi that has nearly 250,000 followers and documents stylish older folk around the world.

“I love watching old people going about their day,” says Wakeman, who often takes iPhone snaps of the stylish seniors she sees; their oversized fits inform her label’s silhouettes. Inspired largely by the style of grandparents in Japan, Wakeman uses washed-in twills and curved seams to better emulate the shapes. Chris Black, a New York-based fashion brand consultant and podcaster who works with labels such as Thom Browne and J Crew, says older people’s trousers “fit similar to how a brand like The Row would do pants today”. Such baggier styles suit today’s penchant for comfort. 

Wakeman likens the appetite for senior citizen style to a return to classics. It’s not quite normcore or the stealth wealth of the television show Succession, nor the novelty sweater vests associated with grandpacore, but more a shift towards those hard-working wardrobe basics that are worn in and faded out. Ones that might be bought second-hand by millennials and Gen-Zers. “It’s harder to get the authentic older-person look when clothes are brand new,” advises Wakeman. Those looking to emulate it, take heed. 

It’s also a bit of a celebration of real clothes. Black says the best older-person garments he sees around New York include “Loro Piana-style overcoats, Belgian loafers and crisp, blue Oxford shirts” — a far cry from the Birkenstock Bostons and puffer jackets that are now sartorial code for millennials. “These days the young ones are all in jeans or tracksuits,” says granda Harry, who wore jeans under his mechanic’s boiler suit, so would never wear them socially. Trousers and shirts, he says, are “much smarter and more respectable”.

The traction of the Gramparents Instagram account speaks to the broader, cultural reality that older people and some of the hobbies typically associated with them, such as gardening, have been trending since the pandemic. It was the first time that many young people in the west were asked to put their elders front and centre. Online and often away from families, millennials and Gen Z connected with seniors through cooking content. I learnt how to make granda Harry’s famed turkey pies and soup via handwritten recipes sent in the post. A 2020 episode of The New York Times’s The Daily podcast, “Soup Is Soup”, during which the host cooked with her grandmother on Zoom, was a funny lockdown hit. A new granny cookbook, Yiayia (£27, Hardie Grant) by food writer Anastasia Miari, published last month, speaks to this joy. 

It’s had a ripple effect. Octogenarian content has gone mass. Sam Youkilis, a fashion and film director based in London and New York, has generated a near-500,000-strong following on Instagram thanks in part to his videos of elderly couples canoodling, holding hands and sharing ice creams. Zara Home recently unveiled a campaign, shot by Jan Vrhovnik, starring Italian nonnas making pasta. In men’s fashion, Aime Leon Dore and Kith regularly have older models in campaigns. In April, LL Bean teamed up with the trendy Japanese label Beams for a collection modelled by eightysomethings.

Jan Vrhovnik, a London-based cinematographer who has shot for brands including Balenciaga, Dunhill and The North Face x Gucci, released a film last month starring his grandad Edi, 83. Edi has been wearing the same faded blue shirt, gym shorts and embroidered cap for 30 years.

Vrhovnik, who captured Edi in Slovenia, thinks there’s “a realness of the elderly on camera that you don’t get from younger people”. Black likens the popularity of elderly content to the TikTok boom, where content is “a little more loose” than on Instagram’s curated, filtered feeds. And for brands, projecting the idea of authenticity, and legacy, is potent. “You get the feeling that the product is timeless and will last a lifetime,” says Kivijärvi.

In the doom and gloom of the news cycle, it’s comforting to see an old person with wrinkles symbolising a life well lived. “In American society, we worship youth to the point of detriment,” says Black. “Showing the other side of that is valuable.” It’s a different kind of aspiration. For a climate-worried generation especially, there’s a stability in older generations — a beauty in the simple idea of getting old — that brands are tapping into. “It’s like, look at this happy old guy, wearing a hoodie,” says Throwing Fits’ Schlossman. “He’s with his wife, and they’ve been married for 50 years. And they’re in love! It’s a completely different sell than before.”

Granda Harry would never wear a hoodie. But he might be convinced by a navy worker’s jacket by Studio Nicholson — a riff on the blue overalls he’s worn in his garage for the best part of 70 years, and similar to one in my own wardrobe. The apple never falls far from the tree. 

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