Beauty ideals

Ideals of beauty have always been different for men and women. While male beauty standards change and evolve through the stages of their lives, those for women are apparently less variable. The female ideal of beauty is usually the same from their early adolescence until their maturity, which implies a utopian and impossible ideal to be achieved by means of healthy living habits. A short time ago a group of British sociologists drew the conclusion that women’s beauty reaches its peak splendour when they turn 31. This is the age when all women would like to stop the clock and many seek to look as though they really are that age.

In this respect, the French director and illustrator, Frederic Doazan, made Supervenus, a short film that won an award at the 17th Brussels Short Film Festival, which has been praised by the critics and has really been going viral over the last few days. It is a short film criticising the current norms of beauty based on certain absolutely detrimental stereotypes that end up destroying women’s bodies. In other words, millions of women spend their lives seeking eternal youth, youth that unfortunately does not last. This film, Supervenus, clearly exemplifies the insatiable search of thousands of women because of today’s norms of beauty.

There are some people in the fashion world who have been raising this question for a long time now and propose solutions adapted to each woman. One of these examples is the Advanced Style blog, known as the Sartorialist for mature people, a file of pictures that shows a street style for mature lovers of fashion.

In this respect, our work with ALCINA has always taken a clear direction: we aim for versatility of the looks shown in the look book, making them adaptable to each woman. A woman’s ages of beauty should be more visible in the fashion world and we, as professionals, must help our clients feel beautiful, whatever their age may be. Being able to adapt the trends to our clients’ ages and styles is one of our greatest challenges and what defines us as real professionals.