Stylist and fashion reporter Anna Byrne shares her Mother’s Day love in her Weekend style column ‘Fashion, Doll’

NOT to embarrass her right before Mother’s Day, but over the past few years, the flush of mum’s youth has given way to the hot flush.

Kelly Osbourne with mum Sharon Picture: Instagram

I have been reading a lot about menopause lately, obviously not for myself, but to understand what my mum is going through. Not to embarrass her right before Mother’s Day, but over the past few years, the flush of mum’s youth has given way to the hot flush.

At least our first “change” comes with the benefit of getting out of the school swimming sports; but menopause, from what I can tell, just looks like a body morphing minefield of night sweats, flourishing flabby bits, thicker waists and ankles, drooping boobs and backsides, people complimenting that you “look good for your age”, not just that you “look good”.

The Duchess of Cambridge with her mother Carole Middleton

Just as you have finally figured out what pants and dress silhouettes suit your figure, the goalposts move on you. Not only are you trying to decipher what is mutton and what is lamb, but you are also trying to avoid what seems to be the single fashion option available to woman of a certain age: a stretchy asymmetrical hemmed dress over even stretchier leggings. I refuse to stand innocently by and watch you, my beautiful mum, be elbowed into an ‘age appropriate’ boring beige sack.

Actress Demi Moore (L) and daughter actress Rumer Willis

It seems to me that while the rest of the world is spoon fed their fashion, the women who breast fed us to the detriment of their own chest have no assistance. No one has written the style manual for you, provided you with stylish role models, or told you how to interpret the trends.

So my gift to you this Mother’s Day, and anyone else feeling a little low after a succession of ominous birthdays, is a younger person’s perspective:

- Do you know what is uglier than wrinkles and a healthy weight? A woman who has been nipped, tucked and veneered into a caricature of her former self.

Kelly Osbourne with mum Sharon Picture: Instagram

- I know at times you feel as though you have taken for granted the long plateau of your fertile fashionable years. But believe me Mum you didn’t. Remember that dress you wore to your brother’s wedding in 1996 with the thigh high split that gradually got higher as your time on the dance floor wore on? I was only 11, and I remember thinking you were the most beautiful woman in the room.

Actresses Blythe Danner (L) and Gwyneth Paltrow

- When you put on your jeans that once fit perfectly and the indentation is too uncomfortable to bear, I know that this is enough to break your outfit, your day, and even your heart. Just go and buy a new pair of jeans; you always made sure I had new jeans when I outgrew the old.

Jerry Hall and daughter Georgia May Jagger

- It takes serious commitment and the help of a good friend to squeeze yourself into shape wear; the modern day equivalent of the corset. I never want you to feel like you ‘should’ wear them. They are unpleasant, uncomfortable things that not only cut off all circulation your legs and then roll up (or down) into a stomach tourniquet. Not to mention the scientific principle of displacement: thus what skin gets squeezed in around the stomach area, is likely to spill out elsewhere. Leave these awful restrictive pieces that try to mould your body alone.

US actress Kate Hudson with her mother Goldie Hawn

Thank you for stocking up my dress up box as a child with clothes that I have since dragged out and continue to wear, because the reality is, there aren’t enough stylish Sarah Jessica Parker moments in the world to make anyone but you the person who’s style I most admire. And thank you for also teaching me the correct way to hang clothes on the line.

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Finally, love your body. You are a mum; your body has done magical and remarkable things. The most remarkable thing my body has done is survive a cross country in primary school; yours produced children. You produced me.

Originally published as Stylist and fashion reporter Anna Byrne shares her Mother’s Day love in her Weekend style column ‘Fashion, Doll’