In How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon, Lyn Slater genially chronicles not just one reinvention but two: her third-act transition from academic to fashion influencer, followed by her shift to becoming something else entirely.
Slater, a working-class child of New York, was a professor of social work when, on the cusp of age 60, she decided to study fashion. In 2014, at 61, she launched a fashion blog that caught fire. Slater appeared in an ad for Valentino eyewear, signed with a modeling agency, and was internationally feted as an older woman who wasn't trying to look young but nevertheless put in the work to look great. Slater's success eventually led to a crisis of conscience: "I wanted my life to have meaning. Posting photos of myself using beauty products on Instagram did not seem to rise to the occasion."
With a nudge from the pandemic, Slater and her partner left Manhattan for upstate New York. At the time that she's writing her book, Slater is nearing 70 and a dedicated gardener, grandmother, and upcycler. "The part of me that is Accidental Icon is not gone," she reassures readers. "I've just reinvented her again, exactly the way I did in 2014." This isn't typical celebrity-influencer fare: How to Be Old is more theoretical than confessional, as much self-help as memoir. The narrative can sometimes meander, but the writing is agile, the present tense a gentle spur to live in the moment, age be damned. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer