There Is No Such Thing as Aunty Fashion

By Ramola Bachchan, Founder, First Resort  ·  27 October 2026

There is a phrase I hear in fittings, in shops and in the comments under almost any photograph of a woman past a certain age wearing something she enjoys. "Isn't that a bit aunty?" Or its mirror image: "Is this too young for me?"

Both questions come from the same place. Somewhere along the way we decided that a woman's clothes should be governed by her age rather than her taste, and we gave the result a name that is meant to sting. I want to say plainly what I think: there is no such thing as aunty fashion. There are clothes that were designed with a woman in mind, and clothes that were not.

A label, not a style

Try to define "aunty fashion" and it falls apart. Is it a kaftan? Then half the most stylish women at any resort in the world are aunties. A printed kurta? A sensible sleeve? A colour brighter than beige, or a colour duller than red? Depending on who is speaking, it is all of these and none of them.

What the label actually describes is not a garment but a woman: older, often larger, and assumed to have stopped caring. The clothes simply get blamed for her. That is why the phrase is so effective, and so unfair. It lets an industry avoid the harder question of why it stopped designing for her.

Notice, too, that there is no male equivalent with the same bite. A man in a loose linen shirt at sixty is relaxed; a woman in a loose kaftan at sixty is "letting herself go". The double standard tells you the phrase was never really about clothes.

The industry's quiet retirement plan

Walk through most fashion, in India or anywhere else, and you can watch the options narrow as a woman gets older. The cuts get boxier, the prints get timid, the detail disappears, and the sizes she needs, if they exist at all, are an afterthought. Then, having offered her almost nothing interesting, we mock her for wearing what was left.

I think this is backwards. The woman in her forties, fifties and sixties is very often the one who knows her own body best, has the clearest sense of what she likes, and is least willing to suffer for a photograph. She is not a customer to be managed. She is the most discerning customer in the room.

We offer older women almost nothing interesting to wear, and then mock them for wearing what was left. The problem was never her taste.

Comfort is not giving up

Part of the "aunty" charge is aimed at comfort, as if choosing a fabric that breathes or a silhouette that moves were a sign that a woman has stopped trying. I have never believed that. Ease, done well, is one of the hardest things in design to get right. A kaftan that falls properly from the shoulder, a tunic that skims rather than clings, trousers with a waist that does not dig in at the end of a long day: none of these is a compromise. They are what good clothes should be at any age.

I wrote recently that the kaftan was never a costume. It was also never an aunty garment. It is one of the oldest and most flattering shapes in dress, and the women who wear it best are often the ones who have stopped asking permission.

Dress for your taste, not your birthday

If a woman of sixty wants to wear a hot pink silk with hand embroidery, she should. If a woman of twenty-five loves a quiet, flowing white cotton, she should too. Age is a poor guide to style; taste, comfort and occasion are much better ones. The most elegant women I know of every generation have one thing in common: they stopped dressing for other people's expectations a long time ago.

This is also why size matters so much to this conversation. The "aunty" label is so often aimed at larger bodies, and larger bodies are so often offered the least. That is part of why we make every style from XS to 8XL, at the same price, with the same work on it. A woman should not have to choose between the cut she wants and the size she needs.

Let the word go

Language shapes what we think is possible. As long as a woman worries that something is "too aunty" or "too young", she is negotiating with a rule that nobody actually wrote down. I would like us to retire the word, and with it the idea that style has an expiry date.

What I hope for is simple. That a woman walks into a room in something she chose because she loves it, and that the only question anyone asks is where she found it.

Ramola Bachchan is the founder of First Resort, a size-inclusive Indian resort wear label sized XS to 8XL.

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