In Hunan, a fashionplate granny
A 74-year-old former factory worker emerges as a stylish Internet heroine
This is not your typical oatmeal-chewing, square-dance-loving grandmother. Black-tinted shades, burning red lips, fuzzy fur coats – the 74-year-old retired factory worker from Changsha, Hunan, wears them with style and swagger, like a chic young model.
Huang Citong never imagined herself dressed like a celebrity before. In fact she still blushes when discussing her photos, taken by her 20-year-old granddaughter, Guo Jingjing.
Guo is a college senior who loves fashion and photography. In February last year Huang came to visit and Guo was captivated by her grandmother’s aura of elegance.
“She was sweet and outgoing, but her clothes were mediocre, so I wanted to change people’s stereotyped image of old grandmas,” Guo says.
She told her grandmother she needed help with a school project. Huang agreed and the first photo shoot started right away, near their home by Songya Lake.
There was little preparation. Everything was improvised during the shoot. Even Huang’s clothes came from Guo’s closet.
“I had one condition,” Huang says. “Not too weird, please.”
Huang had never done a photo shoot, so her poses were reserved and awkward. To help her grandmother relax, Guo chatted casually with her while snapping. After a few tries Huang became more confident and eased.
The photos surpassed everyone’s expectation.
The dark shirt under a checked woollen coat added a layer of complexity and maturity to Huang’s fair skin. Her short, silver hair curled naturally at the sides of her round, tinted sunglasses. The final touch was red lips to bring out her sassiness.
Guo posted the photos on WeChat for friends and family to see. “They were surprised at first, especially my father,” she says, “but later everyone laughed and loved the creativity.”
Huang enjoyed being young again, and also won many fans on the Internet. They begged for another round, and within months Guo and Huang were planning a second photo shoot. This time, Huang modelled dresses and suits she’d never worn before.
Surprising her granddaughter, Huang also came up with new poses to go with her outfit.
In one photo she stands in front of a concrete wall wearing a short white wedding dress and a necklace with five pairs of dangling cherries. She holds her hands like a ballerina, above a caption reading, “Wearing a dress, be my own princess.”
“My grandmother is so beautiful and natural,” Guo says. “She loves her new dress so much that she even wears it to the supermarket.”
Although the photos have made Huang one of the few senior fashionistas on the Internet in China, she says shyly that she doesn’t feel her life is any different than before. “It’s probably because the way I dress every day is very different from what you see in the photos.”
In Guo’s eyes, her grandmother is still the one who always loves the family in her own way. She knits sweaters for her grandchildren and even made 10 sweaters for her unborn great-granddaughter, “to finish these while I still can”.
“The fashion shoot was a project to show my love for her,” Guo says.
Recently she created an animated photo album to make Huang look like she was in Paris and space.
“I wish my grandmother could see the world and do what she loved,” she says. “And I want to keep her company.”
