Becoming a social media influencer wasn’t something Ghanem set out to do, though she does have a deep appreciation for fashion that started young. “I always took good care styling myself and discovering my personal style,” she tells me. “I’d invest in building my wardrobe with quality pieces, and I also loved reading and collecting fashion magazines.”
Yet Ghanem spent time working in a hospital in Lebanon, where she’d received a master’s degree in microbiology before moving to Montreal 16 years ago and becoming a personal trainer. Not professional fields that call for a tremendous amount of investment pieces or frequent outfit documentation. But one look at her Instagram page, and you’d think fashion was a space she’d been working in her entire life.
What’s most interesting about Ghanem—at least to me—is that her clothes are current, intuitive, sexy, and they form outfits that women of any age would want to wear to grab coffee, to go to work or dinner, to wear on a date. Real-life clothes with distinct street-style energy—a rare concept given how so many fashion personalities over 50 or 60 on Instagram present themselves. The ones relegated to the kooky-grandma category, overflowing with mounds of vintage jewelry and glitzy turbans and circus-style tent dresses seemingly designed to be gawked at. They look unique and interesting in their own right, and plenty of women will aspire to dress this way, but Ghanem embraces an understated practicality that inherently makes you take her seriously, as opposed to chuckling, perhaps patronizingly, at the gray-haired lady in the hat.
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As someone constantly struggling with the push-and-pull feelings that come with getting older , I’ve always found so-called fashion rules as they pertain to age especially ruthless—how many times have I heard that a woman over the age of 35 shouldn’t be wearing short skirts? I love short skirts! So I’m grateful when I see women like Ghanem who, in no uncertain terms, convince me that as time goes by, I don’t have to slip into indifference, invisibility, or a giant hat with a bird on top just to telegraph that I’m still stylish.
