LOVE WANT Issue 13:  Age Appropriate

After a quick scroll through the Instagram page of Vienna-based concept store Park, it would be easy to assume that they’re yet another brand cashing in on the current resurgence of older models in the spotlight. In hindsight, it would have been the perfect marketing ploy. But as Park’s co-owner and stylist, Markus Strasser, says “This whole thing, you could never plan it, that’s the beauty of our situation.” It’s this kind of authenticity that summarises the nature of their collaboration; A collaboration that has led @park_wien, and their subject, 95-year-old Ernestine Stollberg, to fame of the social media kind.

The two collaborators met a few years back. Ernestine, nicknamed “Erni”, was always attracted to fashion, and it was Park’s windows, spotlighting pieces by Raf Simons or Ann Demeulemeester, that caught her eye. “She always walked by and at a certain point we just started talking,” recalls Markus, “Then we got the puppy and she loved to visit the puppy so it all kind of went in this direction.” Following two and a half years of hanging out on a daily basis, Markus discovered that Erni was far from camera-shy. While Erni’s long-standing interest in fashion originally led her to study tailoring, her career took off in the 1930s as a dancer. In what was a bold career move, she joined a Jewish dance company specialising in “Revue”; a style both theatrical and sexy for the time. Markus maintains that she draws upon this when creating their audacious, fashion-led images. But beyond the images that fill Park's feed, there is a rare authenticity, built upon a shared sense of intuition. “She is not just a model for us, she is a good friend and someone I care about,” says Markus of what I’m learning is his styling soul-mate.

A product of the Instagram age, their collaboration, intentional or not, more than often prompts Park’s followers to consider topics like age and gender; after all, fashion has always held an important place in starting conversations. At 95, Erni is somewhat of a poster girl for ‘ageing gracefully,’ but that’s a complex term in itself. Ageing as a woman has never been easy; in 2017 the messages of being ‘you’ and being ‘beautiful’ are increasingly at war. While celebrities may be dissolving their fillers in the hope of a graceful (read: natural) transition into their more mature years, a shift in the obsession with women’s personal preferences will be where we see the real beauty and real progress, emerge. As Harling Ross from Man Repeller put it, “Aging gracefully doesn’t necessarily mean ageing without intervention. Ageing gracefully means being given the grace to age exactly how you see fit — or, when necessary, finding that grace for yourself.”

Beyond the beauty, there is another, largely unspoken, reality of age that their collaboration works to highlight head-on. So often do we look at people like Erni and forget about the loneliness, along with the enormous emotional and physical challenges, of being 95 years old. It’s confronting, but as Markus translated Erni’s hilariously immediate and self-assured responses, you get a sense of this remarkable woman’s lust for life. And there is no denying that there is grace in that.

ERNESTINE “ERNI” STOLLBERG

On social media, fashion and her many fans.

In this issue of LOVE WANT, we’re exploring the notion of being ageless and as someone who found Instagram fame at 95 years old, I wanted to know what the term ‘ageless’ means to you, Erni?

Erni Stollberg: If your soul stays young then that is being ageless. Of course, I know I am physically older now but in my head, I still feel like I did 20 or 30 years ago.

Markus Strasser: We’ve talked about this before and in a way, it’s just in Erni’s nature. She is not the kind of elderly woman who’s just surrounded by other elderly people. She is really not interested in that. She even tries to avoid any contact with other older people but only because she is always looking for the younger generation. I mean it’s her character, the way she found us in our shop was knowing that something was going on, something youthful. And it makes sense because she told me once that she is more interested in the younger generation than she is in her own generation.

Is fashion important to you? Is it something that is ageless?

ES: For sure it’s important because you want to go with time! I think fashion is ageless if it fits you...

Age is something that society has become quite obsessed with and women face so much pressure to dress ‘age appropriately’. Do you think women need to make ‘age appropriate’ choices when they get dressed?

ES: That’s okay if they feel like that, but everybody should do what they want. People have to know for themselves.

Was there an age when you felt like you found your style?

ES: I always knew from a very early age. Even when I was a child I had to fight a little bit with my mother because she wanted me to wear something but I didn’t want to. But in the end, I always wore what I wanted.

Have you always been this comfortable in front of the camera, Erni?

ES: Yes. For me it’s nothing special, I’m used to it because it’s something that I’ve always been doing.

MS: Once, I was reading to her some of the comments that we get on our Instagram and there was one comment that was saying that this person was a true fan. So, I told her, expecting such a modest response, and she just said ‘In a way, it’s nice to hear but it’s not so special for me because I’ve always kind of had fans’. She went on to say that even when she was a child she was always the more extroverted girl and had her fans. And I think in her career as a dancer she really had a lot of fans! But in a way, what we are doing really reflects her past, and that’s why I think it’s so easy for her to do it. Being in front of the camera brings back memories and emotions of what she used to do when she was a younger woman.

Having not grown up with social media, what do you think about the way that people share and document their lives on Instagram?

ES: I don’t really understand it fully but generally I find it to be good, the world is more connected using social media, but it’s not for me.

MS: It’s so funny because sometimes when I post a photo and we get say 600 likes in an hour I’ll tell her and she says ‘Of course, it’s 600 likes because people are so bored these days, they don’t have anything to do but to like things’. There’s something about her that always intuitively says the right thing, even if she doesn’t really know what it’s about.

What’s one thing Markus and his work at Park have taught you, Erni?

ES: What is very interesting is that I am still sharpening my taste and, somehow, still learning new things about myself.

MARKUS STRASSER

On making sense of his unique collaboration and why Erni is so much more than a muse.

Intuition is something that has come up a lot in our conversation so far. Can you talk us through your collaboration and how intuition plays a huge part in the process?

Markus Strasser: I’m always pulling outfits for her and sometimes she says ‘I love this!’, and sometimes she says ‘I would never wear this.’ But it’s not about that and we both understand that this is something special that we are doing together. I’ve never experienced a moment with her where I’ve asked her to wear something or to do something in a picture that she has said ‘no’ because she really trusts our relationship and that’s why we can go so far sometimes with certain pictures.

I was making a photo just five minutes before you called, and I put a super oversized man’s suit, in the biggest size I had, size 54 from Christophe Lemaire, and I offered her to sit down in front of the chair. And, before I take the picture I always show her the look in front of a mirror. So she is standing in front of the mirror, looking at herself and that is the moment when she is really realising and intuitively getting into that look, and understanding what it’s all about. Afterwards, I showed her the picture and she said ‘I’m really looking like a man here,’ and I said ‘Yeah because you inhaled the look and you instinctively transformed the idea that I had.’ That’s what is so interesting about our collaboration, that we don’t really talk much when we take the pictures; I never tell her really what kind of expression she has to do. Instead, that comes from her, because she really feels the outfit I’ve chosen for her. I never have to tell her, it’s something that comes from within her.

What inspired you to start styling Erni in this way?

MS: We got to know each other more closely, about three years ago, and since then Erni has been in the shop every day. She comes in at 10:30 am, leaves for lunchtime, and after lunch, she comes back and she stays until we close the shop. As it is sometimes with elderly people, they want to have the feeling of youth, of having a sense of life. She was always asking me ‘What can I do? Can I help you with anything?’ Sometimes she would help me fold up things, so I’d give her little things to do. But at a certain moment, we just realised that she was so beautiful in pictures and it became something, after two and half years that we met, we started to take pictures. It made her feel more comfortable because she felt that there was a new thing going on in her life and that there was now something for her that had a real sense of purpose. This whole thing, you could never plan it, that’s the beauty of our situation. It just happened to us.

What does your collaboration mean for women and society?

MS: When we started this whole thing I didn’t question it, but then, after two or three months it had such a response I had to start trying to put it in words. For me, I think the beauty of it and the special thing about what we are doing is that you can put all kinds of clothes on Erni without barriers. Most people have a barrier in their mind when it comes to what they’re supposed to wear, in which circumstance, at what age they’re supposed to wear it etc. For me, it’s very important that Erni is not a product of plastic surgery. So it is also very important to show the world that you can age gracefully. I think a lot of young women connect with us because of this. I mean there are older women who like what we do, but there are young women who can suddenly identify with a 95-year-old, and still want to buy the clothes. This is something very spectacular.

It’s also in a way, just Erni. She’s just so special at that age and it doesn’t happen very often. These days women are so pressured by the beauty and fashion industries so it’s a very important signal. That started to come out of my inner soul very intuitively in the beginning, because having a shop and dealing with fashion constantly, you are questioning things and also seeing what’s going on with women. 

Our work also brings me to consider gender identity and gender fluidity because I often style Erni in men’s clothes. For me, it’s very important that I see that in my shop. A lot of women buy in our men’s section but people don’t talk about that. I think it’s important to stop this separation, and the pictures also support that idea.

What’s something that Erni has taught you?

MS: I don’t even know where to start. I think it’s just very touching and very emotional that she moves so many people. Of course, she also moves me, as you can probably hear. I really get immediately touched. It’s difficult for me to answer questions like that. We became such close friends and this whole thing is more than just these pictures, I really took over responsibility for her. I take her to my parent's place for Christmas because she is alone. She doesn’t have any family anymore, she doesn’t really have friends anymore. So it’s also an obligation to be there for her. But I think this whole thing works and vice versa in the sense that I’m there for her and she is there for me.

One thing I’ve learned from her is that getting old is heavy. Because she’s not just this super happy old lady, I mean she is sometimes very sad and sometimes very angry. I think it’s because her character is so diverse, it’s not only the happy and the shiny Erni you see, it’s also sadness or aggression. Her character works on a lot of different levels which I think you can see in the pictures. I’m trying to respect that but show that age is not only happiness, it goes along with a lot of heavy things. Physically, there are two pictures where we show Erni walking on her sticks but she is so proud. So, I think what I can learn about our story is that ageing is not easy, but you can get there. If you have the will. She still wants to live. She sometimes says ‘I think it’s getting too much for me, this whole life,’ and then the next day she says ‘I’m back!’ And that’s what I learn from her, that she is very willing to live.