Four Denver Women (and Their Pets) Appear in the Latest Advanced Style Series

A survey by Gransnet revealed that women start to feel invisible after age 52, confirming a social phenomenon known as “invisible woman syndrome.” But nobody can say that about the women of Advanced Style.

Author Ari Seth Cohen began to highlight stylish older women through his Advanced Style photo blog back in 2008, and the result is changing how people perceive mature women — especially those with confidence and a fun-loving, bold fashion sense.

For Cohen, it was his stylish grandmother who encouraged his love of fashion; she told him stories of her time in New York, and suggested he go there himself. After she passed, he set out on a journey to be close to other older women with whom he would connect through their sense of style.

“I moved to New York because I didn't know what else to do," Cohen says. "I was filled with this deep sense of loss, and I was really looking for my grandmother and her wisdom."

In the Big Apple, he started taking photos of older women on the streets who had expressive personal style. “I had friends going on thirty years old who were already worried about their first gray hair or wrinkles, and yet I was seeing all these women out there living really vibrant, creative lives,” Cohen recalls.

The collection of photos was the starting point of his Advanced Style blog, which caught the attention of the New York Times. Then a book offer came, leading to the 2012 published collection of his street-style photos from New York and London up to that point. The next year, a coloring book was published based on his photos, titled Advanced Style The Coloring Book.

More books followed: Advanced Style: Older and Wiser in 2016, featuring photos and essays, and Advanced Love in 2018, which showcased couples of a certain age.

Now, Cohen is releasing Advanced Pets, with a signing on Saturday, November 16, at Tattered Cover on East Colfax. This time, he focused on his models’ love for their pets. The book deal came during the pandemic, when he noticed that the stay-at-home isolation drove people to be comforted by their animal companions. “There are these deep bonds that people have with their animals that is really powerful,” says Cohen.
The book includes mostly women, with some men, and Cohen found they didn’t always have just cats and dogs: Farm animals, a tortoise and a rat all made their modeling debuts. However, photographing pets is not quite the same as photographing people. Pets don’t know how to strike a pose. Cohen found out it took a bit more patience to get the shot.

“It was fun. I photographed a woman and her cow in Florida, and she was wearing a skirt that looked like a ball gown in the middle of a farm. But it took hours because we had to wait for Lucy the cow to feel comfortable and settle down,” he recalls.
With several books under his belt and a popular Instagram account, Cohen’s Advanced Style is not only an established series; it's becoming a movement, as younger women see older women expressing their creativity and personalities through their clothes as an aspirational force, indicating that the later years are something to look forward to rather than dread.

But how does Cohen find these colorful people?

“When I go to a city, I just walk for hours, and that's how I have always met people,” he says. “Then once you meet someone, you might meet their friends, or they might suggest someone, or I meet them through social media.”

For anyone hoping to be an Advanced Style woman when they “grow up,” Cohen says the criteria is the older the better. “Definitely over sixty,” he says. I really want to show the possibilities of how you can be as you get older.”

He stresses that it’s not always about the outfit, but about the vibe. “It's so personal to me," he says. "It's about the energy someone has, just the feeling I get when I see someone on the street.”

For this book, Cohen found four fabulous ladies from Denver, including EllynAnne Geisel, author of The Apron Book; fashion designer Brooks Luby; Mrs. Colorado of 2022, Sylvia Walker; and Judith Boyd, known to many as the @StyleCrone from her popular Instagram account in which she shares her love of fashion. In fact, it was the Advanced Style blog that inspired Boyd to start her own content creation. Now, at the age of 82, she feels honored to be part of Cohen's books. “It allows older people to consider themselves valuable to the culture and that we have something to offer,” she says. “It gives me courage to continue to do what I love to do.”
With the ladies of Advanced Style showing what later chapters in life could look like, Cohen says it’s not been without critical backlash. But he knows not to take it personally, because it says more about the critics than it does his models.

“There’s been more positive response than negative," he notes. "I think sometimes, when someone sees someone living very boldly, it can make them feel uncomfortable because they might not be doing that themselves.”

For Boyd, it’s something much more than the fashion on the surface. “I feel that we're very fortunate that Ari had the vision and brilliance to do this," she says. "If we don't fear growing old, it increases our longevity. It gives us life in a lot of ways.”

Advanced Pets signing, 6 p.m. Saturday, November 16, Tattered Cover, 2526 East Colfax Avenue; tickets are $47.87 and include a book.