High Fashion, Average Woman is dedicated to all the women who have “aged out” of the average fashion magazine demographic. We deserve a better, more concise, place to find information related to fashion, beauty, style, culture, and sexual health.
Who is the Average Woman? She’s every single one of us who does her best every day to look her best. She’s a discerning consumer with an eye for fashion, and who won’t settle for cheap cosmetics. She doesn’t have have tons of money to buy designer brands. Sometimes she’s a frugalista, but you would never be able to tell. She can enjoy re-creating top fashion looks for the best price, and believes in shopping her closet before and after she shops the stores.
She’s curvy, pear shaped, hourglass, apple-butt, flute-shaped. Petite, Way Tall, and every height in between. She’s the woman next to you on the street, in the cubicle, across the hall.
She is Everywhere–except in the pages of the fashion magazines….or on the minds of many designers.
High Fashion doesn’t really know she exists, but she knows High Fashion is there. And wonders quite often why it keeps forgetting about her.
We can change that….
About Tish Grier
I first learned about fashion from my Mom, who was a milliner when she was a young woman, and an artist as an old woman. She always tried her best to look her best on a very restricted budget. She did this for herself (because my father certainly didn’t care.) It was from her that I learned the basics about coordinating clothes, keeping fit, and dressing good even when nobody else was watching.
Later, I learned a little more about fashion from Sears Charm School (long story–I’ll tell you later.)
And my girlfriends. Then, magazines…
When I was in my 20′s and early 30′s, I was a serious fashionista. I was cute and thin and just about anything I put on looked great.
Then, I got older, and kind of lost my way–mostly because I didn’t see Me anywhere, and figured I was irrelevant. The junior clothes were too small, and the misses clothes were too old. My body was doing weird things, my hair was changing, and I didn’t get that “professional” didn’t have to mean “frumpy.”
I found my way back to fashion through a circuitous path among piles and piles of fashion magazines and a regular subscription to Women’s Wear Daily. There, I discovered that being a Stylish Woman didn’t mean I had to start dressing “menopausal” just because I’d turned 50. Especially since I certainly don’t feel 50-and neither to my friends, who run the gamut from 40-something to mid 50-something. None of us feel our age, and many of us aren’t looking for that baggy dress, comfy sandals and little dangly earrings. Many of us are old punks, new artists, web designers, illustrators, itinerant writers, school teachers, career counselors, social marketers. We want more from fashion.
And we’re going to get it 
My philosophy on fashion and beauty is simple: A woman shouldn’t just give up because she reaches a certain age,and isn’t featured honestly and without prejudice in most fashion magazines. She may have a bit of trouble negotiating what’s what in the world of beauty and fashion. Nobody really talks directly to her, and she doesn’t have a heck of a lot of time in her day.
My mission here is simple: make recommendations, give guidance where I can, show where other women over 40 are in the media world, celebrate where we’re at and that we are a different generation of women over 40.
Before High Fashion Average Woman I blogged at The Constant Observer, as well as on a personal blog. Both got me some attention as a blogger. Which I then leveraged to get some cool gigs in experimental journalism and social media marketing. I gave up the Constant Observer for a while, but I’m back to blogging there as well as here. Lots of reasons for that, which you can read….
I also blog at Cinema Omnibus because I’m an obsessive movie nerd.
