Author and “Accidental Icon” Lyn Slater, 70, Shares Her Aging Wisdom

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There’s a good reason Lyn Slater is known to style enthusiasts around the world as an accidental icon.

In 2014, while working as a professor of social work at Fordham University in New York, Slater started a fashion blog at age 61; within a couple of years, it went viral, skyrocketing her to internet fame. “I think it was probably because around that same time, in 2015 and ’16, Joan Didion was in a Celine ad and I was in a Valentino eyewear ad, and I think that was the first time a lot of people had seen that older people did fashion advertising,” she tells Bazaar.

A decade later, the majority of Slater’s followers are younger women looking to her as a role model for aging gracefully—her bold reinvention of herself helped them see getting older as something to look forward to, rather than fear. “A lot of young women feel so pressured to do everything in their life before 30,” she says. “My message basically was: Calm down. You’re going to have an entire life to do whatever you want.” Slater considers herself a fashion devotee, but her approach to her online presence doesn’t stop at trends and style: She has always been more interested in her platform as a way to express herself creatively.

Now, as she enters her early 70s, Slater is reinventing herself again, this time as a memoirist. After figuratively writing the book on how to grow old, she has also done it literally, with the March 12 hardcover release of How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly From the Accidental Icon (Plume). To learn more about the art of aging, along with some of Slater’s go-to product favorites, we caught up with the author for a peek into what keeps her feeling vibrant, inspired, and seen.

If you don’t mind sharing, how old are you?

I am 70, and I have to say my generation is aging in a very different way than my mom. We were all feminists—a lot of us worked and had careers, and at our ages we’re still working. I’m publishing my first creative writing book at the age of 70. I’m luckily quite healthy and very fit, and very excited to see what this decade will bring me in this new reinvention that I have as a writer, which I’ll primarily be doing.

What age do you feel you are in your head?

That can change from day to day. Because, here’s the beauty of it: At age 70, I have every age I ever was inside of me, so there’s a million things that can bring out the energy of any particular age. You put on a song that I loved in my 20s, and I am up on my feet moving like I’m 25 years old again in a disco.

And for me, I extend that to how I dress, because you do have all of these ages, and how you dress can also evoke the memories of that time. I have kept one or two significant pieces from different decades of my life that I can go and put on. And I might style them differently than I did then, but I’m wearing the same garment that I wore when I was 30. It probably still has the perfume I wore when I was 30 on it. So, that is the beauty of older age—you have this rich repertoire of all your ages.

There are some days I feel 18, there are some days I feel 50. In my 50s, I was really generating a career and I had a lot of energy. On those days when I’m 50, that’s when I’m working on supporting my writing career and generating stuff about it. These experiences are great to have with you in your older life, and they’re additive. And that’s the thing I hate about the way age is played—it’s like you’re going to lose all these things. I have years and years of memories, experiences, skills, and knowledge that I can deploy to anything I want to do, as long as I have my health. So, to me, it’s not a subtractive; it’s actually additive, the older you get.

Do you have a beloved beauty product that you’ve worn for most of your life?

The one thing that I’ve always done, and probably the only thing I’ve always done, is make sure I had a good moisturizer. And the brand of that moisturizer may change over time, but my mother taught me to wash my face and moisturize, and that’s the beauty routine I’ve done pretty much my whole life. I have to say, I love my skin. I have some wrinkles around my mouth from stress, but for the most part, the skin on my face is really healthy, smooth, and shining, and that is because I have not overdone my skincare routine.

But the one thing I always keep with me is perfume. And when I was in my 20s, the perfumes that I was wearing were all from [Guerlain’s] Shalimar line. For each moment of my life, I have a signature perfume; I use perfume and clothes as a way to express my identity, and who I want to be now, and also, who I aspire to be. And so, I have a story in my book about going to Paris to promote one fragrance, and ending up buying a different one called Another 13.

It was when I was starting to feel burned-out, and I had so many fantasies about being a writer, and I absolutely love Jefferson Hack and AnOther Magazine, and all of his magazines. And so, Another 13 was actually a collaboration between him and Le Labo, and it was meant to smell like pages from a new magazine. For me, the perfume then became part of my story of wanting to become and really craft this life as a writer.

What aspects of your physical appearance do you love more now, as you’ve gotten older?

So, I do completely love my skin. I adore my shoulders. And for whatever the reason is, they have remained, I think—they look strong and beautiful to me when I look at them, and I’d say those are probably the two parts of my body that I love the best. And I appreciate my legs and arms because they are working perfectly and let me do everything I need to do. I would have to say my hair, too. I’ve always had very straight hair, and I’ve been lucky that as my hair has become gray, it is now stark white in a way that people will go to a beauty salon and ask to get their hair dyed like that. It almost looks platinum.

Which beauty products would you say have aged well?

I’d say Ruby Woo lipstick from MAC Cosmetics. I have used MAC since I was in my 20s, and I continue to use their products. And for the days that I’m not dressing up and wearing red, I turn to their more natural Cherish shade—they have both aged beautifully. I am a massive fan of MAC; they’re always breaking social boundaries.

A lot of conversations around aging seem to lead to injectables and plastic surgery. Tell us, what are your thoughts on the topic?

I look at everything from a health perspective, which is, in a way, a more neutral way to look at it. So, I think that if women feel that they want to do those sorts of things, that they need to really dig into the research and look at the long-term outcomes of what that does to your face, muscles, and your health, and make a decision. In the long term, is it worth it? And they should be very, very clear about the question “Why am I doing this?” It’s important to ask: Are you doing it because society is making you feel that if you don’t look young, you’re worthless? Are you doing it because of personal reasons?

Where do you find beauty inspiration?

At the height of Accidental Icon, I worked with a lot of makeup artists, and I have to say, they were my favorite people on a set. It’s almost like the relationship you have with your hairstylist, where they’re almost like a therapist, but the makeup artist would always be the most real person talking to you on set. And so, there are some artists I worked with that I follow on Instagram because I loved their work. I have to say, I do follow Pat McGrath because she’s just freaking brilliant. Like, what she did for Margiela was beyond. So, I follow these makeup artists not so much to teach me how I should put on makeup now, but for inspiration. How do you use makeup in a way that reflects a different self, or possible self? Or, you know, some new dimension of you?

What are the best pieces of beauty wisdom you’ve ever received from someone older and from someone younger than you?

I think one of the best pieces of beauty advice that I got from a younger person was how important it is to think about your inside, in terms of how that’s going to impact your outside. Throughout my life, I’ve always been running at 500 miles an hour, not always eating in the best way, exercising sporadically. And when this young person started to talk to me about that, I realized that I looked horrible. I didn’t look healthy, let’s put it that way. So, I started to eat differently and do things differently, and it was a huge change for me.

From an older person, I would have to say that it was my mother, who had gorgeous skin until the day she died at 95. Her basic advice was “Minimal is better,” and that was for skincare and makeup, and I've found that to be really true myself. So, face washes I like to experiment with and feel the different textures and scents, and then [I apply] a good moisturizer. Those two pieces of advice, now that I’m 70, I think have served me really well.

Nobody can make it through life without a few scars. What is one of yours that tells a story?

Since we’re talking about age, I will share a story that impacted me. Again, because of my reinventive nature, I got my PhD later in life, so I actually finished it when I was in my 50s. Prior to that, I’d still been hired as a professor because I had this particular area of expertise, and the dean hired me on the condition that I would finish my PhD, but I had a good four years before that happened. And during that time, I became known as a really good professor—my teaching evaluations were amazing, I had published an academic book, and I got my PhD. I started to send out my CV to tenure-track positions in other universities and colleges, and I had taught as an adjunct. So, despite having lots of teaching experience, publishing an academic book, and having really stunning teaching evaluations, I didn’t get one interview.

Some of my colleagues were like, “Well, do they know how old you are?” And I said, “Well, you know, I put the date I graduated from college—1975.” Ultimately, they basically said, they’re not going to hire you because you’re going to be 60 and retiring, and they’re not going to invest in a tenured position. And that was just so devastating to me, because up until that point, I had not considered age as something that was going to get in my way. Part of it, of course, is that I have a lot of privilege because I’m white and educated and et cetera, so it really caught me—it was like a kick in the stomach. And I kind of wonder if Accidental Icon wasn’t my revenge on that. “Okay, you want me to be invisible? Well, let me show you. I’m going to put myself into an area that’s usually reserved for the young, and watch what I’m going to do.” So, the important thing is, when you have this scar, how are you going to respond to it?

Please give us a quick breakdown of your current beauty routine.

One of the very first paid things I did in my little Accidental Icon journey was working with Oribe on the launch of their silver shampoo and conditioner collection. And I worked with James Pecis, an amazing hairstylist, and he put my hair up into what looked like a flame of white hair for the promotion. That being said, I still use those products for my hair now. First of all, they’re not the usual purple or blue product for hair. They have a very different formulation, and I absolutely love how they make my white hair look. Then, it’s pretty much a Dyson hair dryer, round brush, and I’m done.

Silverati Shampoo

Silverati Conditioner

Supersonic Hair Dryer

My skincare routine, again, very simple: I get up, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and put on some moisturizer. I’ve also been trying skin oils lately, but those are kind of iffy, because sometimes they’re too oily, so I most usually default to a moisturizer. Then, I use my MAC tinted moisturizer, I have my little Cherish, which is my everyday lipstick, and I do have to say, I absolute adore Gucci Beauty eyeliner—it’s the only one I use. I use Gucci for my eyeliner, brows, and mascara. I usually do not use eye shadow, but there’s this beautiful blue-gray shade that Gucci makes, and I use that with a little liner, mascara. I like to do my brows because they’re dark, so it’s a nice contrast with my white hair. And at the end of the day, it’s about making sure I remove my makeup and moisturizing again before bed, and that’s pretty much it.

The Super Hydrator

Strobe Dewy Skin Tint

Multiuse Palette De Beauté Quatuor

Stylo Contour des Yeux Eyeliner

Crayon Définition Sourcils Eyebrow Pencil

Mascara L’Obscur

Many people fear growing older. In your opinion, what is the best part about it?

I think the freedom that comes with it. Starting with: You really kind of stop comparing yourself, and stop caring about what other people think of you. And that doesn’t mean that you become inconsiderate. Of course you care about the feelings of the people you love. But it’s pretty much, you walk through the world and you really don’t give a flying F about what’s going to come your way. And that freedom is so incredible, particularly now in this age of social media, where people are just terrified of how they’re going to present and how they’re going to be cut, and what’s going to come back at them. I think I have been very fortunate that I rarely receive negativity, but I think part of it is the attitude of “Take me or leave me, I really don’t care.”

There’s also freedom if you have planned to explore and experiment with different things that you didn’t have time to previously in your life. The freedom to experiment is something that people think is part of being young, but now, it’s really a huge part of being old. Freedom is the word. I think a lot of older women are feeling very free about the kind of relationships they want, and the kinds of relationships they have. A lot of women my age are cohabitating—I’m cohabitating. Calvin and I are not married; we’ve been together for 26 years. There are older women who are in serious relationships but choose to live apart. So, there’s this freedom, this amazing freedom, to chart out the kind of life that you as a woman want to live, and maybe you didn’t have that earlier in your life. So: freedom, freedom, freedom.

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