The 68-year-old blogger on positive ageing, vintage clothes and how the death of her mother brought her back to life
By Romy Hansen
I meet Suzi at David Lloyds in Brighton, right after her pilates class. She immediately stands out from the crowd. Her look bears little similarity to regular workout attire, rocking her signature vintage headband, sunglasses and coral lip gloss, only moments after finishing her class. Since launching her blog and Instagram account Alternative Ageing in 2014, Suzi has accumulated over 17,000 followers who share her inspiring love for photography, style and vintage clothes.
Suzi is an ambassador for positive ageing. She explains: “We’re anti-war, we’re anti-poverty, we’re anti-racism, but why on earth are we anti-ageing? We’re very lucky if we age. I’ve adopted the term positive ageing. I’m very happy to be ageing, why would I want to die young?”
“We’re anti-war, we’re anti-poverty, we’re anti-racism, but why on earth are we anti-ageing?”
According to Suzi, embracing your age is the key to living a happy life. “I don’t understand people who change the way they look to stay young. It doesn’t work,” says Suzi. In her opinion, people would do better to be “anti-mucking about with [their] face”, than being anti-ageing. Having witnessed the ever-growing plastic surgery epidemic during a trip to
Beverly Hills, she couldn’t believe her eyes. “I couldn’t stop laughing. All these people with their faces stretched…it looks horrific,” says Suzi.
Despite all her positivity, even Suzi Grant has moments when she struggles to accept herself. She tells me she used to be “neurotic” about her looks as a broadcast journalist. Even now, 20-odd-years later, being on camera for TV appearances and YouTube videos can reveal certain insecurities. “If they get me at the wrong angle, I really do hate it. I looked awful on Good Morning Toronto”, she insists while still smiling.
“But, you know, every single one of us, 14 to 90 years old, has insecurities every time they look in the mirror,” she says, adding: “There’s no point worrying about it, most things aren’t even noticeable to anyone else, so get over it."
Suzi and her online followers, which she refers to as her “tribe”, refuse to be limited and made invisible by stereotypical norms of age. Given her love for vibrant vintage clothing and eccentric style, she more than lives up to her Instagram profile and is anything but invisible. “I’ll never be in uniform, I hate the uniform. That’s why I love vintage,” she says assertively.
Her heart beats for unique and quirky looks from the 50s, 60s, and 80s that reflect her personality and help her exude confidence. And although many would describe her as a fashion blogger, Suzi says she has no interest in it. “I’m not about fashion at all, I hate fashion trends. I don’t buy fashion magazines, I don’t even buy Vogue,” she says. Describing herself as funky rather than fashionable she’s convinced style goes far beyond fashion, especially beyond 50. “I’m not going to be a fashion victim, I’m a style victim,” she declares.
Her advice to like-minded women is to “get into colours, experiment with different looks, try headscarves or gloves or wacky glasses and get out of black, for God’s sake”. That being said, she’s aware not everything is appropriate for her age, listing hot pants, tube tops and leopard print as unforgivable style sins she will never commit. “I hate leopard print, it reminds me of Coronation Street,” she says jokingly.
Despite Suzi’s colossal success as a blogger, not all of her peers look fondly upon her way of life. She explains that some of her old friends from school, one in particular, find her late career “inappropriate.” She recalls a birthday lunch some years ago, when an old friend criticised her saying: “Why on earth are you still working, you’re supposed to be retired!” But Suzi says she isn’t bothered by the friend, saying: “She’s still very bitter and twisted to this day. She doesn’t want to work and watches daytime television all day every day. She just doesn’t understand and that’s fine.”
At her core, Suzi believes a healthy mind and body will give you happiness, especially in later years. “I know of women in their 80s that go on cruises and they’re as fit as fiddles. Who doesn’t want that, rather than sitting in slippers staring at the TV?” she asks.
BOTH PICTURES COURTESY OF SUZI GRANT
But Suzi wasn’t always mindful of her lifestyle choices. Before she was a trained nutritionist, author, blogger and style icon, she worked long hours as a television journalist for the BBC and Sky News. “It was the 80s, it was insane. Broadcast journalism was overstaffed. We’d go out for four-hour lunches drinking at the pub. It was a very heavy drinking and smoking life with very little sleep. We used to have champagne at breakfast if we had done a news shift overnight, that’s what it was like. It was probably the best time of my life,” she says.
That is until the death of her mother at the age of 63. Suzi says: “It freaked me out so much, even though looking back she had the classic symptoms. She was overweight, she didn’t do any exercise, she was unhappy and she drank like a fish.”
Suzi says her mother’s death was a necessary wake-up call that probably saved her life. “I thought, well, I don’t want to end up dying at 63, I’ve got way too much to do. It got me looking into health books and taking care of myself better. I gave up smoking and started living a much better lifestyle,” she says.
Today, Suzi says she’s happier than she was 20 or even 30 years ago. Her only dream for the future (besides reaching 100,000 Instagram followers) is to help other women achieve their full potential, no matter what their age. She says: “I’d love to help the whole world age visibly and happily and in style. That’s my mission.