I AM not proposing that what the love of my life ordains is enjoyable to her is anything less than essential. But sometimes, in my quieter moments, I question the resulting value of what is achieved by shopping for clothes, in terms of quality of life.

Few designers of fashion ever adapt their creations for the over-fifties, who are unable to incorporate daily work outs and spartan diets into their busy family lives and have developed the more natural maternal figure which grand children and great grand children feel more at ease with.

Hence, the host of aimless, blank faced and chair bound male companions to be seen outside fitting rooms, inside and outside the entrances to the cathedrals of good taste while their spouses search for the right look which evades them.

There seems to be nothing between scruffy and over dressed, staid and trendy, short and tall or fat and thin for the young at heart matriarchs we follow.

Does the fashion industry go out of its way to create dissatisfaction, discontent, exclusion and depression among the generations that are richest in character, humour, life experience, durability and independency?

Or are they just totally obsessed with the image of youth?

There is money to be made by any who desert the flock and study the needs of the comfortable majority.

George Appleby,

Leighton Croft,

Clifton,

York.

Updated: 11:09 Tuesday, June 14, 2005