Angela Mollard: Coastal grandmother vibe is now cool for all ages

Forget the cut out outfits — the younger generation is now clamouring to emulate the coastal grandmother fashion vibe. And columnist Angela Mollard has never felt so on trend.

When George Bernard Shaw said youth was wasted on the young he was revealing himself not as some erudite polemicist skilled at capturing the zeitgeist but a cranky old bastard with jealousy issues.

Because anyone who says they’re not envious of youth is a liar. I mean, just look at them. They’re the best youth we’ve ever had what with their chutzpah and their wit and their tolerance of others and the fabulous way they regard mental health as something to take care of not avoid.

And it’s not just the taut skin, functioning knees and sex on tap. As far as I can make out they’ve executed a seismic shift in how they work so that instead of putting in 40 dull years at the coalface they can duck and weave and reinvent to their hearts – or wallets – content.

If all you ever wanted was freedom then it’s staring out at you from the cafes in Bali where every second millennial is a digital nomad tapping on a laptop.

Honestly, I’d fill the house with them if I could in the hope some of that radiance and insouciance might brush off although that would doubtless involve a flat-share arrangement and I know their Achilles heel is a cleaning roster.

Anyway, I digress because there is one thing that would stop me time-travelling back to my 20s. In fact, this horror visited on modern youth is so heinously awful and so universally adopted – well, by the girls at least – that it makes me shudder just thinking about it.

Diane Keaton (right), pictured with Frances McDormand, shows off her “coastal grandmother” style in the 2004 film Something's Gotta Give.

Yes, the one thing that keeps me firmly and happily in middle-age territory is cut-outs.

Have you seen them?

Well, clearly you can’t see them because a cut-out is a piece of clothing that’s not there. And these bits of sartorial not there-ness are everywhere. On every dress, every bikini, every trouser leg and every almost-top.

Boobs, thighs, stomachs, backs, triceps, groins – all of them are now exposed by great chunks of missing clothing which look less like fashion and more a garment for the operating table.

Aren’t they cold? A friend’s daughter at university in Melbourne posted a picture of herself and a mate earlier this month. Chloe was wearing a dress with not one but two cut-outs around the waist and her friend was sporting a dress with a diamond-shaped cut-out from neck to navel.

They looked amazing but Victoria in May is positively arctic and I wanted to get the poor things a blanket.

Anyway, turns out my instincts are spot on because in a fascinating sociological switch from us envying them to them envying us these kidlets have clearly decided that hypothermia is somewhat thwarting their vibe and so they’ve stolen my look.

Well, to be fair it’s the “Diane” look – that fabulous chunky jumper atop comfy chino, topped with cute hat look – worn so artfully by Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give and Diane Lane in Nights In Rodanthe. They’ve even given it a hashtag: #coastalgrandmother.

Thanks to the Dianes – and Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated – the young are now clamouring to emulate the coastal grandmother vibe, buying up cream knits, navy and white linen napkins and shoes which take them from the beach to “the store”. They’d no doubt pack their groceries in paper bags if they could.

Anne Hathaway channels the #coastalgrandmother on Instagram.

Never have I been so on trend. What’s more you don’t even have to live by the coast or be a grandmother. In fact, all my mates – none of them grannies – are revelling in their relevancy as jumpers they’ve worn since 1997 and hats they wear to prevent skin cancer are suddenly the chicest thing since we all got on-board with skinny jeans.

With narrow denim now pulled out from under us and women everywhere flailing over straights, flares and those ghastly bootcuts, coastal grandmother has provided a new comfort zone.

As actress Anne Hathaway, in cream chinos, a white shirt and straw hat commented recently: “I have been ready for #coastalgrandmother chic since before TikTok was born. May this moment never end.”

May it indeed because there are few things so pleasing as knowing that not just your wardrobe but your lifestyle is desirable.

Apparently, all the things I love – lots of sleep, homegrown tomatoes, fine glassware, fig-scented candles, walking, reading a book, flowers from the garden and watching the sun go down on the back deck – are suddenly sought after by the Under 30s. Except they have to acquire the accoutrements. We got the napkin rings as wedding presents and the cashmere jumpers in 80 per cent-off sales. Go us.

There’s even playlists on Spotify labelled coastal grandmother which means you don’t have to know your Dua Lipa but can, instead, settle in for an evening of James Taylor, Earth Wind And Fire and Little River Band. Who’d have thought you could earn street cred for knowing every lyric from Cool Change – “the albatross and the whales, they are my brothers”.

Just one tip, however, which anyone with daughters should heed. Hide your jumpers.

[e-mail]; twitter.com/angelamollard

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Sight every parent has spent their lives waiting for

Something astonishing happened this week.

Actually, it’s not astonishing. On reflection, it’s just rather lovely.

On Tuesday evening at dusk I swung into my driveway having been to the supermarket to shop for dinner and there, on the kerb, poised for emptying, were my bins. Two of them; red and blue; standing as neat as pins.

How kind, I thought. Andrew, my neighbour, must think I’m away and has put them out. But Andrew’s own bins weren’t out so it couldn’t have been him.

It must’ve been Judy – my neighbour on the other side. She’s in her 80s. The last thing she needs to be doing is hauling my detritus out to the street. I lugged the groceries inside then grabbed my phone to message her.

“Hi Mum,” came my daughter’s voice from up the stairs.

“Oh, you’re home,” I called back. “Judy must think we’re away because she’s put our bins out.”

Angela Mollard’s Instagram post after her daughter brought out their bins.

“No, I put them out,” she said nonchalantly.

I was dumbstruck. Not, as my 18-year-old has since surmised, because I think she’s incapable or self-absorbed, but because of another more complex emotion I couldn’t initially fathom.

At first I made fun of it, taking a picture of the bins, and posting it on Instagram.

“Never mind teething and walking and learning to count to 20, I have just witnessed the most extraordinary milestone in 21 years of parenting,” I wrote.

“I came home to find the offspring had put the bins out. Unprompted. My work here is done.”

The general consensus was that this was miraculous.

“Stop it,” commented one parent with younger children. “That will happen one day?”

A friend tagged her daughter who is also 18: “I think I would faint if you did this.”

Another, with four grown-up sons, simply typed the faceplant emoji followed by two words: “I’ve failed.”

Then the suspicion started. Surely my teen was proactively disposing of some kind of incriminating evidence. So I checked. Nope, just the usual KFC wrappers and some packaging from The Iconic.

“Speaking from experience, check that your car isn’t dinted,” advised another mother of four.

Then her big sister texted from interstate: “There is no way she put out the bins. I smell a (insert rat emoji).”

As I made dinner — san choy bau which the bin queen had requested earlier in the day — I unpicked my feelings.

For 21 years I have guided and corralled two little people through life. A lot of that time I’ve done it on my own, not because their dad isn’t great but because he travelled a lot.

It wasn’t thankless – parenting is a choice which should come with no expectation of praise, but it was, and still is, the most soul-searching thing I’ve done. And so it should be. Shaping a human is an extraordinary responsibility.

Yet seeing those bins on the street wasn’t a measure of my mothering even if my fellow columnist, Frances Whiting, messaged to say that I was clearly a Parent Whisperer and should immediately write a book called Who Put The Bins Out.

Columnist Angela Mollard. Picture: Tim Hunter

The truth is I didn’t feel that heart swell of pride you feel when they score a goal or receive a prize on school presentation night. Rather, it was a profound happiness akin to observing her older sister helping an elderly woman reach an item on a high shelf in the supermarket.

I suspect it’s in the quotidian tasks of everyday life, not the calibre but the kindness of a person is revealed.

A lot of us are troubled by modern parenting. We fear our kids are entitled and that they don’t have the values we grew up with. Yet we’re shamelessly championing and propelling them at every turn.

We say we just want them to be happy and yet an entire tutoring industry is predicated on our neurosis surrounding success. We agonise over their friendships – whether they’ve got enough and whether they’re the “right” friends – in a way our parents never did.

Indeed, as we encourage our children to be decent people, we’re not always the most inclusive or considerate ourselves.

Equally, as more families have two parents who work there is little expectation that kids will make dinner or bring in the washing in the way blue collar families pitched in through the latter half of the last century. Extra-curricular activities, homework and outsourcing domestic tasks have put paid to that.

And then there’s fractured families, like mine, where parents are rived with concern that their own failings have harmed their children. It has taken me years to appreciate that it’s in loss and discomfort and things not working out that grit is born.

In the end, I don’t have to ask my daughter why she put the bins out. Maybe because it’s just the two of us at home and she knows we’re both working equally hard. Maybe because she’s growing up as her increased consideration around most things attests. Maybe because she just did.

In any case, I’m grateful. And say so with a quiet thank you.

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Actually, the only thing special about it is that you cut up the fruit really small and sprinkle it with lime juice and chopped mint. It means you get spoonfuls of mixed fruit not singular chunks which isn’t really a salad at all!

Originally published as Angela Mollard: Coastal grandmother vibe is now cool for all ages