Judith Boyd is 76 – but that didn’t stop her modelling trendsetting designs at New York Fashion Week.
She describes herself as a ‘granfluencer’ – a senior influencer on social media and she now has over 50,000 followers on Instagram.
The former psychiatric nurse Judith Boyd, a widow with three children and eight grandchildren, named her blog ‘style crone’ and says she wants to use the word to celebrate rather than denigrate older woman.
Judith, of Denver, Colorado, USA, said: ‘Crone used to be a positive description of an older woman, who would have been celebrated in traditional cultures, but today it is used to describe an ‘ugly old woman.
‘I want to change that and raise awareness of the original meaning of the word, to help celebrate older women.
‘Ageism divides the generations, which is bad for both younger and older people, and I think, as a mature woman, it’s never been more important to be out there and visible and talking to people of all ages, which is what I do.’
Surprisingly, Judith only stared modelling a few years ago, aged 72.
‘I joined a modelling agency a couple of years ago,’ she said ‘I’ve done a jewellery ad campaign and I’ve walked on the runway for a Denver designer, opening their show during New York Fashion Week earlier this year.
‘It just goes to show it is never too late.’
Before then, the world of fashion had always been far from her day-to-day life.
She grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota in the American mid-west, with three brothers.
She had single aunts who worked in the city and she always regarded them as the epitome of glamour.
She said: ‘I loved dressing up from a young age, although there was no focus on style in my immediate family.
‘I remember having a number of aunts who worked in the city. They were secretaries and teachers and I thought they were very stylish.
‘Back then, you could not teach and be married, so the ones that were teachers must have been single and I did think they were very glamorous.’
Aged 18, Judith left the farm to start her nursing training in the city of Minneapolis, which was four hours away from where she grew up.
Judith started to develop her unique sense of style and her passion for vintage clothes, especially hats, after moving away.
She said: ‘I was working as a psychiatric nurse in the emergency department of a large hospital, so my day was filled with talking to people who were traumatised, suicidal, homicidal and psychotic,” she said.
‘They would be in the middle of the biggest crisis of their lives and I found I was good at talking to them, because I was empathetic.
‘I would think about what to wear to work in the morning, because I no longer had to wear a nursing uniform and, in a way, my clothes prepared me for the day. They allowed me to express myself and I know my patients appreciated that in their day too.’
She married age 23 and had two children, Troy, 49 and Tania, 47, but they separated in 1975 and she moved to Denver in Colorado to be closer to friends.
Two years later in 1977 she met Nelson, who she married in 1980. The father of her third child, Camille, 38, he loved hats, too, and, like Judith, was innately stylish.
She was devastated when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2005, and was taken from her in 2011, aged 62, just nine months after they launched her style blog, which she says helped her to keep going after his death.
‘I carried on blogging to honour Nelson. When he died, it was so hard to think about going on without him, but the blog helped,’ she said.
‘I blogged throughout the time he was dying. He would have a chemotherapy appointment and I would decide what to wear and then write a blog about what you wear to go to chemotherapy with your dying husband.
‘Nelson would take the photos when we were alone together, before his treatment started, so he really helped me lay the foundations for the life I have now and my reinvention of myself after his death.
‘I realised when Nelson died that there are things that happen that we cannot control in our lives, but there are also things like what we wear, what we eat and whether we exercise or not, which we do choose.’
Now an avid campaigner against ageism, Judith hopes that her blog and her positive attitude to life in her 70s, will inspire other women to realise that age is just a number.
‘I’ve just started a new project working with widows where I combine my mental health background with my style in telling the story of my own loss and reinvention and I hope that helps inspire others,’ she said.
And by continuing with her blogging and Instagram she feels she has found a way of keeping the love story she shared with Nelson alive.
‘I have had some very positive responses and the modelling has been wonderful,” she said.
‘It really was a way to lighten up a devastating experience, Nelson would have supported it completely.’
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