As a lady of a certain age, I want to be fashion-conscious. Perish the thought that I should wear things that would look better on someone younger. On several occasions I have searched online for “fashions for fifty-plus woman,” or “what to wear after fifty.” Never mind that from that day forward, every time I go online, I am inundated with tasteful and age-appropriate garment ideas. Truth be told, I have gotten some good advice in the bargain.

The first and most helpful suggestion was to wear solid colors and ditch the ruffles. (There goes that paisley poodle skirt I had been saving.) I took the solid color thing to heart, and the brighter the better, I say. My mother was a gorgeous redhead who also loved bright colors. Unfortunately, people of her generation were told a lot of stupid stuff, one of which was that redheads could not wear red. She used to say that she wanted to have pure white hair when she got old, just so she could wear a red dress.

Well, now I have the white hair (I gave up the hair color thing because it was a messy and time-consuming, and I was forever missing a spot so that there would be this tuft of gray sticking out from under the store-bought auburn). And by God, I will wear red, or red and pink, or pink and purple, or all three if I feel like it. And of course, there is bright blue. I didn’t get Mama’s red hair (none of us girls did) but I did get the blue eyes, and nothing makes these baby blues “pop” like a blue dress.

Honestly, I think the solid-color thing has been with me all my life. As the youngest of four girls I got a lot of hand-me-downs. My cousin Byrd, the oldest, never bought anything but dark blue. When I turned six years old, we each got ten dollars from a great-aunt, and I used mine to buy a pair of hot pink polyester bell bottoms. I wore them until about age ten, when they were stained and ragged with the elastic coming out of the waist. And now, I love my silver hair, and I wear many bright and beautiful colors.  Just no polka dots.