Editor’s Note: This piece is excerpted from Lyn Slater’s “How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon” with permission from Plume, imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. © 2024 by Lyn Slater.

(CNN) — In the fall of 2019, I received an e-mail from a group of Parsons Fashion Design and Society MFA students who had been given the assignment to make a collection of clothes for “seniors,” as part of a course that involves creating designs that focus on disabled, plus-size, transgender and aging people. The students were divided into four teams, with each team charge to find a muse/collaborator within their respective category — to ensure primary research and a meaningful outcome. The students asked me for an interview, hoping that I might become their muse.

The students had gone around to senior centers, asking what older people want in their clothing. The answers — focused more on issues of fit, comfort and disguising signs of age — had discouraged them. Though these elements are important, the students seemed to want an aesthetic of age that could inspire them; they want to make old age high fashion, something beyond just function. (I think to