Senior Divas Showcase Over-the-Top Fashion and Big Personalities in ADVANCED STYLE

First-time filmmaker Lina Plioplyte discusses her new documentary Advanced Style, which examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers - aged 62 to 95 - whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to fabulous aging.

She’s joined in the interview with Ari Seth Cohen, who created the blog Advanced Style, the basis for the film.

Ari says he has a long and rich history with eccentric elderly women. “It’s something I’ve been doing since I was really young – I was best friends with my grandmother growing up in San Diego, and we just used to hang out and watch old movies, and I think I really got my sense of style from my grandmother.”

He began meeting fabulous older women on the streets of New York when he moved to the city from Seattle in 2008, and started photographing and interviewing them as a personal project. He says he soon realized that these extraordinary women had “the power to change our perceptions of aging,” to show that elderly women never have to stop dressing up and being creative, no matter what age they are.

So he started a blog that showcases the women in their outfits and tells their lively experiences in the big city. “We became so captivated by these women and their stories, we couldn’t stop filming that,” he said. “I have to chase 80-year-olds down Madison Avenue wearing high heels. Surprisingly, many women have been very open with the project, and I think a lot of these women haven’t had the chance to tell their stories for so long,” Ari said.

“In America, especially, we tend to push older people aside and treat them as invisible. So I think the fact that I’m approaching them and giving them this moment to really share – either their style or their stories – they’ve been very receptive to that.” He added that he’s only been yelled at a few times, and never been hit.

Lina talks about one of the film’s central figures, Ilona Royce Smithkin, 94, who comes into her own as an artist and performer much later in life. “She was raised by very stern parents in Europe, and she never thought she was good enough. She was always being crunched by what everybody else thought, and just wasn’t embracing life,” said Lina.

She told the filmmakers that one she started teaching – in her 80s - she realized she did have a gift, “and now she’s floating.”

Ari adds: “But if you talk to (Ilona’s) friends, they’ll say she was always this colorful, vibrant person, and I think that’s what she showed to the world. And then at 80, she realized that it wasn’t the surface, and she really had something inside of her that people really responded to, and she just let go of all those insecurities.”

“The editing process was interesting because you have to have seven stories and have to tell them fully, and to intertwine them,” Lina said. “So really, it was being at the right moment at the right time. When the book came out and they began meeting each other and started going to the fashion campaigns in Los Angeles, it became this family.” But she describes the group as a bit unusual because the women actually make up more of a of “diva family.”

“Once the blog started to take off, casting directors would approach me wanting these different women in campaigns,” Ari said about the commercial opportunities given to some of his subjects. “I think it is important for them to do these things and show that just because you’re 80 years old, you don’t have to sit in a rocking chair and die.”

Lina adds: “But they are totally riding the fame wave, oh my God they are. We had screenings in New York and they showed up every single one of them, they love each other, each other’s outfits, it’s just this whole big thing.”

Watch the full episode to learn more about Advanced Style and its amazing cast of characters, and to also hear the filmmakers deal with the issue of America’s elderly retreating in loneliness in nursing homes across the nation.