Can you dress too young for your age?

[Elliebobhobnob]

Can you dress too young for your age, and if so how would you define dressing too young?

It could be a man or woman.

I'm interested to know how someone would describe a person dressing too young.

Some bits are just not so nice to look at as you get older, for men and women so cover up a bit if things are not what they were. But if you don't care do what you like.

Grim attitude.

I'm 46 and my 18yo son tells me I dress like a teenager! I still wear pretty much the same as I did back then to be fair (and the same as he does most days!) - currently wearing black jeans, a guns n roses T-shirt and converse. My day to day style just hasn't changed much, although I'm more than capable of glamming it up with a nice dress and heels if the occasion calls for it.

Read "In Your Prime" by India Knight, which has some excellent rules-of-thumb on that.

Personally I think there's such a thing as not dressing right for your body, and it's just a fact that older people's figures aren't usually as good as younger people's and you need to take that into account. No skin-tight things over rolls of fat, low-cut tops showing wrinkly decolletage, miniskirts on those that no longer have the legs for it etc. Mutton is about looking desperate and delusional (like you think you DO still have a chest people want to see or whatever).

I like the classy trendy look when I'm going out but dress really casual hoodies, jeans, trainers for chilling.

For women: following trends slavishly whether they suit you or not is mutton, often. (And then some are so scared of that they go too far the other way - too conservative, matchy-matchy, mother-of-the-bride, grannyish. It's about finding the middle way).

For men: kind of the opposite, i.e. not moving with the times enough. Some men seem to stick with the look of the time when they were young and thin and sexy, and it's not fooling anyone. Jeans and leather jackets that fitted 30 years ago and don't now, greying hair thinning on top with a little rats-tail ponytail at the back, that sort of thing. The ageing rocker look. And any attempt to disguise baldness with combovers etc. Male mutton also often comes out in the summer (so many British males just can't dress for warm weather) - shorts that are way too short and not flattering.

For both: that kind of scruffiness that can look insouciant and cool on teens and twentysomethings (ripped or frayed jeans, battered leather, worn-out shoes, faded tees etc). As someone who naturally errs towards the scruffy (I was a teen in the grunge era and that suited me just great), I've realised, probably a bit too slowly, that as you get older it just makes you look unkempt and poor. I mean, I am quite poor, but sometimes I don't want to look it. I'm treated with more respect when I don't wear jumpers with holes in, funnily enough.