To study older women is to lay claim to a very large field. Women can live a long time after fifty, and people react to changing styles in different ways as they age. You can see that very clearly in what I suspect is a mother-daughter photo from the 1920s, with both women well advanced in age. The daughter on the left, maybe in her fifties or sixties, still shows some interest in the current fashion. She wears a dropped waist dress with a long slim line. Her shoes are a popular twenties style, and she wears them with flesh colored stockings. Note that she has also bobbed her hair.
The mother, maybe in her seventies or eighties, has a more tenuous relationship to the prevailing styles. Although her dress has a dropped waist, it is very full at the bottom and also quite long. Her hair is gathered up on the top of her head, a style she might have worn for decades. She has on sensible black lace-up oxfords, long beloved of older women, worn with heavy black stockings.
I have an imagined conversation between the two. “Mother, you could look younger if you just changed your shoes.” And the mother replied, “I don’t take fashion advice from someone who has cut off all her hair.”
The mother’s dress appears to be a strange design overall. Are the sleeves multi-layered or is she wearing a jacket made out of the same fabric as the dress? A dropped-waist dress with a gathered skirt wasn’t flattering in the 1990’s (I made one) or in the 1920’s!