Ageism Is Never In Style, Jacynth Bassett
Bassett's activism, she says, wasn’t born out of a personal frustration with ageing initially – she’s in her early 30s – but rather came from an acute awareness of how older people, particularly women, were being treated.
It started with her mother. ‘She had me at 40,’ Jacynth recalls. ‘And as she got older, I saw how she was increasingly made to feel invisible and irrelevant, despite still being at the peak of her career.’ Their experiences of shopping together were especially revealing – sales assistants ignored her mother, made assumptions about what she should wear and treated her as an afterthought.
Jacynth found this deeply unsettling. Why was a woman with disposable income, a strong sense of style and decades of experience being dismissed? Why were fashion brands so quick to pigeonhole older women into reductive, outdated stereotypes?
In this conversation, we delve into the genesis of The Bias Cut, an online boutique born in 2016 and dedicated to age-inclusive fashion that refuses to trade in clichés, the power of language in shaping age-related bias, the Super Age myth and the swathes of possibilities that age-inclusive marketing represent.
To join the conversation and support Jacynth’s work, check out Ageism Is Never In Style for all campaigns, consultancy and community initiatives and The Bias Cut for age-inclusive fashion. You can also follow Jacynth on Instagram and LinkedIn for thought-leadership and insights.