It’s too bad mom jeans are back.

This was Linda from the bow of the boat we row around the harbor on Sundays.

You should write a piece about fashion and what people should and shouldn’t do at our age.

Linda has a big public sector job that keeps her more or less paying attention to fashion trends for work while I angst in jeans over my computer keyboard most days. My jeans are billed as midrise – high enough to cover a muffin top and low enough to suggest a navel in the event I get delusional about the state of my abs.

The return of mom jeans was news to me, but I could see at our apres-row coffee joint where hipsters occupy table real estate with a latte and a laptop (a future blog), they’ve not only made a comeback, many are also skinny jeans for a high waist/tight legs look that isn’t entirely flattering.

I went shopping last week and ended up with pants I had to pry myself into. The sales woman said I shouldn’t be put off by the tightness or skinniness of the legs. They’ll stretch out, she said, so I bought them and have been pouring myself into and urging them to stretch ever since.

I don’t really like these new pants. You know what I like? At the risk of sounding like a sad anachronism, I miss the fashions of the early ‘70s. Not the ‘80s and its Star Trek shoulder pads, nor the ‘90s with its wide belts and, yes, mom jeans.  The ‘70s with its groovy jumpsuits, flowy peasant tops, and jeans with just the slightest bell-bottom still speaks to me.

My sister-in-law Pat and I recently ventured into a small town boutique where the clothes hung loose, natural, and young and I was tempted, ever so tempted, to try on a peasanty top with light embroidery across the bodice.

I took it off the rack, held it up to the mirror and, realizing I’d look like the wife of an aging Swiss goatherd – Heidi in her sixties – put it back.

So here’s the question. Mine, but Linda’s too.

How do you know if you’re dressing too young? If you’re still drawn to the fashions and styles you bought and wore in your thirties, should you consider them now when nothing is as taut or high?

Magazine advice says wear what makes you feel good. But what if what makes you feel good, makes you look stupid? And what if you’re just vain enough, that looking stupid isn’t in the cards?

My mom’s generation had a phrase for people who dressed too young for their age: mutton dressed as lamb. Still, I don’t know anyone of my generation who aspires to mutton dressed as mutton.

I don’t think Linda and I are the first 60-somethings with how-do-I-dress-now questions.

The one thing I know for sure is it won’t be in mom jeans.