Here is an uncommon conundrum for the social media age: when you are an 80-year-old Instagram influencer with over 50,000 followers, aged mostly 17-26 years old, where do you look to for style inspiration?
For Eileen Smith, the Dublin grandmother behind the astonishingly popular Instagram account @eileenstylequeen, her pick is Mary Orton, an American fashion blogger. The appeal is obvious: clean lines, vibrant colours, effortless glamour, endless sophistication - all the hallmarks of an Eileen Style Queen outfit post.
In her comments, you’ll see Eileen behaving endearingly much like any other Instagram user, telling the mother-to-be "How lovely to see how you can dress up nicely going through your pregnancy and out and about", adding a two-conjoined-hearts emoji here, a flower one there.
"Her style is lovely and I’m always complimenting her on it, because why not, if you like it?"
A new kind of influencer
In the social media maelstrom of fitness bloggers, makeup artists and Cian Twomey, Smith, from Ballsbridge in Dublin, has become one of Ireland’s most unlikely fashion influencers, with her posts routinely clocking up to and over 4,000 likes and followers including Roz Purcell, Pippa O'Connor and Louise McSharry.
Followers of all ages celebrate her understated mirror selfies, her expertly composed outfits of jumpers, blouses and tops in often riotous colours, well-tailored dresses and trousers that sit just so and always a bit of bling.
Her star appeal was only cemented when last year she was named Best Fashion Influencer at the Beauty Blog Awards, followed by a nomination for Most Stylish Online Influencer at this year’s Peter Mark VIP Style Awards 2019.
If that wasn’t enough, a heartwarming appearance on RTÉ’s How to Live Better for Longer, during which she discussed the need to "get up, dress up and get out", confirmed that Smith is exactly the kind of influencer we need.
How does Smith find her fame? "I get embarrassed, to tell you the truth!"
Smith’s Instagram - the handle of which was chosen by her daughter and appears to cause Smith no end of embarrassment - began after years of sharing outfit photos to her three daughters, one of which lives in Australia while another is in Limerick. After years of this, they suggested that their mum start her own account, which was a piece of cake for Smith.
A bit of style
Always a lover of fashion, Smith says she honed her personal style long ago and has rarely strayed from the formula. "I like plain sort of clothes but good colours, a bit of style about them", she says.
"I always wore plain tailored stuff, and I lived in Dubai for a long time [with her husband, Larry, a former pilot] and my husband bought me a lot of lovely jewellery, so I could wear a plain cream dress and wear some nice gold jewellery on it."
"For young people, they can change the style according to what’s in at the moment, but for older people, I don’t think you can do that. I think you find a style that suits you and stay with it."
While her genesis as an online star might be a little less common, Smith is, quite frankly and in the internet sense, all of us. A cursory scroll through her colourful Instagram account betrays a love for cake and especially meringue (same), a devotion to a mirror selfie pose that works (crucial) and an inability to ignore the sales, while dressed in the most extravagant outfit possible.
I mean, same.
Sameness notwithstanding, it is undeniable that Smith’s audience - predominantly young women aged between 17-26 years of age - are not coming to her account to see someone who looks like them. Her posts so clearly speak of an entirely different demographic: one of bridge and large, long-term friend groups, of a large, growing family and nights in spent baking for loved ones.
So what is the appeal?
"That’s the thing that absolutely amazes me", Smith says about her follower base. "I could be in Dundrum shopping centre and lots of people - I say lots but it might be four or five - might say ‘I follow you, can I take a selfie?’"
"Most of them say ‘I want to emulate you when I’m older’, and that I don’t understand because I’m me, I’m myself. I’m not emulating anybody else!"
Smith asserts that she never dresses for her account or for her followers, saying "I don’t ever literally dress up to take a photograph. I dress for what I’m doing for the day". The night before we spoke, she had hosted her large group of friends for their weekly bridge date at her home, for which she baked a meringue roulade. Placed on her dining table, it made a nice picture, so she took one and put it online. "Because that’s what I do."
Authenticity
Authenticity is a word bandied about far too often when we talk about social media, and especially when we talk about fashion or beauty on social media. It’s the new gold standard among influencers, proof that you can be engaging and charismatic without the help of filters or affected, palatable personas that operate in online shorthand.
This is also incredibly hard to pull off … authentically.
As a recent article in The Guardian stated, the spate of high-profile influencer-led marketing disasters such as Fyre Fest and the recent James Charles and Tati Westbrook scandal have embittered followers towards the personalities that kept them scrolling in the first place. This has also led to a degree of "performative transparency", whereby bloggers lift back the veil on their accounts, letting their followers peek at the "reality" of their careers as influencers.
In this sense, Smith might be the most authentic influencer in Ireland. Her outfits are put together using pieces she may have had for 20 years, with no thought paid to what is trending right now or what the latest Instagram aesthetic is, while her hair is always in the same sophisticated bouffant. Her posts are reliable on one hand, but charmingly uncommon on the other.
I suggest that one reason her account is so popular is that it offers people a glimpse at someone who has finely honed their style over the years, keeping what works for them, chucking what doesn’t. This, in a society sprinting ever more from the grips of fast fashion, is aspirational. Reassuring, even.
She can see my point, and concedes that there are some people in the world that do not and most likely will not ever learn how to dress well.
"Not everybody has that", she says. "One of my friends, we have a great time together, we’re just like family. She has no idea what to wear so, when we get her, we go down to her place and we all walk into the shop and have a look around and find different things. I might pick out a lovely shirt and say ‘that would be beautiful on you’. She’ll go and try it on, never looks in the mirror, never asks how much it is and she’ll walk up and buy it because it’s perfect on her."
People dress for themselves
Don’t misunderstand her, she loves trends. Just on other people. "I love when [her granddaughter] comes in in her little short skirts and low-cut things on her and I say ‘good for her! That’s the age she is, she’s 18 years of age. Why not?’"
"I’m not one of these people that would say ‘oh, look at the way she’s dressed’. I don’t do that. People dress for themselves."
For many people, the way they dress is intrinsically linked to their overall mindset, and in many ways this seems true of Smith. Pondering her young fan base again, she muses "I think that they’re thinking about me, about when they are my age they’d like to still dress nicely", something that links into Smith’s broader perspective on life.
"People like seeing us out and about, playing golf", she says, referring to her posts from the golf course or from friends’ houses. "It’s very important when you reach a certain age, like over 60, not to just sit down now like, ‘I’ve done it all, I’ve had my children, they’re all left, they all have jobs’. I think it behoves us to get out and get up and do things."
"It’s the people who don’t build up that when they’re younger and then when they’re in their 60, they don’t have places to go, things to look forward to or people to dress up for."
Eileen Style Queen’s top 3 tips for putting together a good outfit:
- "Put time into putting the colours together and making an outfit interesting."
- Simple is often best if you’re unsure. "You can go quite plainly dressed by wearing a nice blazer and a nice shirt, a nice pair of pants and a nice pair of shoes and the accessories that go with it. That can look just as nice as anything else."
- "If I was going out anywhere I would sort things out to see what goes with what before I wear it. I might try it on, even, a day before."
