Who am I and what is Midlifechic?
I’m Nikki Garnett, I’m 59 and I live near the Lake District in the North West of England. I’m married with 3 sons aged 29, 24 and 22, a cat called Alfie and a dog called Ted. My husband Mal and I run a small creative agency as well as increasingly working together on this blog which I have loved and laboured over for the last 12 years.
Midlifechic is slowly evolving from being the online world that you find here where I talk about style, beauty, travel, family, menopause and other midlife factors. I’m still doing that but I’m starting to add a new, real life dimension by holding reader events both in the UK and abroad. I’m creating them because so many women tell me they’re a bit lonely in midlife. That somewhere along the way their friendships have changed or drifted away – so with such a fascinating bunch of women telling me the same thing, it made sense to connect everyone. I started slowly with small events in 2021 and now they’re getting bigger and more exciting. The whole point is to pull thinking midlife women together to make new friends who are interested in going beyond chit chat. They’re looking for proper conversations about anything and everything.
So you can come here fore style advice and to read my musings on contemporary midlife or you can join in – you choose, you’re welcome either way.
My background
Like many women in midlife, I have a sense of ‘once I was…’ because for 9 years (in my pre-children days) I was a head of marketing at Selfridges with a particular role as editor of their customer magazines. I don’t need to tell you that being editor of Selfridges magazine was a fabulous job. Every day was different and I worked with fabulous (often famous but then not always so fabulous) people and gorgeous products in wonderful places.
Every month I planned the content for a new issue, choosing what to shoot and what to write about. The world’s biggest brands were at my fingertips along with the incredible in-store team and all of their fashion tips and wisdom. One of my lightbulb moments a few months into the job was learning that money doesn’t buy style when a legendary style guru taught me that clothes are like diamonds. She explained that they’re all about the Cs but rather than clarity and carat, with clothes you’re looking for cloth, cut and colour.
So Selfridges was my Oxbridge when it came to learning about style, women, their bodies and what works best. I was fortunate to spend as long as I did working with style mavens and it gave me the tools that I continue to use as the foundation for the pieces that I write about clothes and fashion on this blog. I loved my job and style in those days was a no brainer. However when my second baby came along, the juggling got too much and so, along with my husband (who had been head of the creative studio at Selfridges), I said a sad goodbye and left to set up a creative agency.
New beginnings
We gained some great clients thanks to friends who had moved to high places and began working on brands ranging from New Look through to John Lewis, M&S and Harrods. Somehow I managed to fit in another son… but I still had the feeling that something was missing. That something was the North – as the saying goes ‘you can take a girl out of the North but…’
So, as if life wasn’t full enough, we ripped our little family and baby business up by the roots and transplanted them to a very dilapidated old Georgian house with a view of the sea and the lakes. Whether it was a good plan or not we’ll never know because I have no idea how life would have turned out if we’d stayed South. We’ve been there for over 20 years and it’s been a great place to bring up a family. The boys are all grown up now, we’ve lived through the university years, one is settled and working in London, the younger two have returned home – one just recently from travelling, the other to complete his post graduate qualifications.
We find life near the Lakes very quiet which is good when peace is what we want but midlife is a time for fun and so a few years ago we bought a city pad too – in Newcastle, closer to Mal’s side of the family. Newcastle is a city unlike any other and we go there regularly to let our hair down. We also let out our apartment to trusted Midlifechic readers so if you’d like a taste of our lives there, you’ll find it here.
How I lost my style mojo
But I digress, let’s go back to the beginning of Midlifechic. I started it when I lost my style mojo. Trying to pin down exactly when that happened reminds me of being a teenager and agonising over when a relationship started to go wrong. I think it began when I stopped working at Selfridges and found myself a mum in the playground where I tried my hardest to fit in. When we moved North it was all about outdoorsy clothing – I hated it and it didn’t suit me but it just became a habit.
And life was full. As well as a young family, a business and a house renovation, I had parents to support through a cancer journey and so there was no time for left in the week for me. There came a day when I looked at myself in a mirror and just didn’t recognise anything about the woman I saw there. But I still had a tiny spark of self worth inside and I knew I wanted to do something about it.
And so, in 2016 when my youngest was 10 I started writing this blog as a way of getting my groove back. I found that if I could look at myself objectively in the pictures I posted I could work on myself as a project. I lost the weight I needed to and reinvented my wardrobe. It’s taken a long time but I did it by pulling out all of the old style lessons I’d learned in my training at Selfridges – about understanding your body architecture, your textures, the cuts and colours that suit you and then working them around your lifestyle.
Today
Which brings us to 2026. After twelve years of writing Midlifechic I can honestly say I had no idea of the joy that it would bring. I started it as a personal project, never imagining that anyone else would read it but now the community has grown into a steady 48,000 weekly readers and an engaged Instagram audience of 50k.
The conversations in the comments have become real life friendships and readers have built relationships with each other as well as with me. My core focus is still often about style but it’s widened too, into beauty and travel, menopause, the empty nest, life with adult offspring, ageing parents, work that’s still energising, marriage and identity at fifty-plus and the much bigger question of what we all want this next stage of our lives to look like.
A hub for midlife friendship
In my day job I continue to work with brands using my retail experience and insight into the midlife mindset to advise retailers on what it is that midlife women want. But on top of that, Midlifechic has taken me to all sorts of unexpected places, from Kensington Palace to Paris, Transylvania, Mexico and Colombia.
This year I’ve launched a programme of reader Events and Escapes – UK retreats and day meet-ups, longer destination trips, all built around the Midlifechic community. In 2026 we’ve had three reader retreats in the Lake District where women have spent time focusing on the next stage of their lives, as well as a night in Bristol just for fun. There’s also a salsa dancing week in Colombia coming up. Next spring we have trips to Marrakech and I have great plans up my sleeve for the autumn.
The best part of it continues to be an email coming in from a new reader telling me she’s found honesty, laughter and reassurance somewhere in this midlife world we’ve built between us. After all, a blog is only as good as the community that grows around it.
So thank you for reading. I believe there has never been a better time to be a midlife woman. We’re forging a whole new way of approaching this stage of life, and it’s up to us to keep changing the way society sees both who we are and what we stand for. There’s plenty more ahead. I hope you’ll stay and join me.
Instagram – On the road @midlifechic
A few people have asked about my hair colour - is it natural or not…?
A few years ago I grew my colour out and tried grey. It didn’t suit me because my skin tone is too warm so I sadly accepted that I wasn’t one of those women who pull it off with panache.
When I had it coloured again though it felt fake - until I found a colourist who really understood older hair.
So meet my colourist André at Hershesons, he refuses to cover the whites completely and he doesn’t strip them away.
He blends colour in but retains 40% of the natural colour so my own whites run through the highlights and lowlights rather than hiding away.
The result doesn’t pretend that I’m not ageing but it gives my skin tone a better boost than my natural colour would.
And because so much of my own colour is woven through, the regrowth just melts in. In these ‘before’ pictures it hadn’t been done for six months.
Then @hair_by_premlee cuts and finishes it, because a good shape is what makes grey look chosen rather than accidental.
Last time I was in, I asked them for their tips on ageing hair. I’ve saved their best ones into the post above, the ones I’d have loved to know years ago.
Your hair is the best investment you make on a cost per wear basis. But don’t let anyone tell you what to do with it - it’s up to you whether you colour it, blend it or go completely natural.
For me though there’s something freeing about working with my natural ageing rather than trying to hide it.
To colour or not is always a hot topic so tell me what you do with yours.
(With thanks to André and Premlee, both at @hershesons. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my hair).
#Midlifechic #GearingUpToSixty #GoingGrey #MenopauseHair AgeIsStyle
Don’t go gently into that good night, not while there’s still fun to be had out there... and you already know there’s plenty.
Don’t let anyone dumb you down... tell you you’re too old... that it isn’t appropriate... that you should know better at your age.
Because you do know better. You know that life’s short and it’s for seizing. This is our time to be free, to have fun.
Remember, we’re not fading softly, we’re staying alive.
How do you defy people’s expectations of ageing?
#midlife #ageisstyle #stayingalive #midlifewomen #midlifechic
They say we’re too old for festivals… yet we invented the ones they go to.
GenX didn’t start festivals — the Boomers did but some say they then went home to buy houses. We’re the generation that turned a few muddy weekends into a permanent culture.
Acid house... the Second Summer of Love… Rave... GenX built a scene so big the government passed a law to stop us dancing in fields. You don’t get legislated against for showing up to someone else’s party.
The whole calendar Millennials and GenZ take for granted is ours: Glastonbury became Glastonbury on our watch, Reading became a rite of passage, T in the Park, V, Creamfields... all Gen X.
So no, we’re not too old for festivals. We’re the reason there still are any. The people telling us to go home are standing in a field we built.
But the best part now is doing it all again with the younger lot. Nothing beats being in a crowd where three generations are singing the same chorus. We’re not clinging on… we’re passing it on. A festival was always meant to be shared across ages, that’s the whole point of a field with no doors on it.
So we’ll see you in the crowd.
#GenXAndProud #FestivalForever #TooYoungToStayHome #RaveNewWorld #SeeYouInTheCrowd
(PR trip) We almost said no. An invitation from @moresailing to a week’s sailing in Croatia, four cabins on one boat, a week living alongside people we’d never met, and the worry that a shared holiday means giving up your freedom
It turned out to be the opposite. We sailed together every day with people who were strangers on the Saturday and felt like friends by the Wednesday. The company was there whenever we wanted it.
And then, every evening, it wasn’t - in a good way. We docked somewhere new and had dinner, just the two of us.
I’d half expected to have to choose between people and privacy. You don’t. This, I think, is a great way to travel in midlife - enough company to feel part of something but with enough time to be yourself.
Our 5 days aboard was gifted by @moresailing and as always every word here is my own.
Have you ever found yourself travelling with strangers and loving it?
#gifted #midlifetravel #sailingholiday #croatia #midlifeadventures
I wear bright colour nearly every day, it’s just who I am so I forget it can seem bold until someone comes up to tell me that she’d love to but she wouldn’t dare.
Often she’ll explain that she reaches for navy instead or beige because they make her feel safe and won’t draw looks.
I understand that. Safe feels sensible.
But then she’ll often add, almost in the same breath, that she feels invisible now. That she walks down the street and nobody sees her any more.
I don’t think those two things are a coincidence. When you dress not to be noticed you tend to get your wish and that can actually be lonelier than it sounds.
This is what I say to anyone - if you’re feeling that you’re fading away try a bright colour and do it now while it’s summer because summer makes it easy.
One bright dress and you’re done with no colour to layer through tights and boots and jumpers and bags. Add a bit of sun and bare arms and it just looks like you, enjoying yourself.
The difference it makes has nothing to do with looking nice, it’s a lot more.
If I wear bright clothes people smile at me and start chatting. Colour seems to indicate that you’re warm and open before you’ve said a word. It can turn a lonely day into a vibrant one.
You’ve got all summer to try it. Think of one bright colour that you’ve always loved but never quite dared to wear. Tell me what it is below and I’ll talk you into it.
#ageisstyle #styleover50 #colourover50 #womenover50 #summerstyle
Ask someone what “too much” actually means and they can’t quite tell you, which is the first clue that it isn’t a real rule
I still own this navy and I still love it. The problem is never one safe outfit, it’s when safe takes over your whole wardrobe without you noticing.
Toning yourself down does work. It works up until the day that you feel invisible.
A brighter shade of blue is the easiest way to start. It isn’t about being looked at, it’s about not disappearing.
If colour’s been on your mind, summer is the time to try it for two reasons
In winter a bright colour has to coordinate with lots of other layers. In summer it’s a top and one other thing or just a dress. It’s easy.
Bare arms and legs break t
(Not an ad, just a personal recommendation)
I love a luxury lipstick as much as anyone else but this is such good value that I can keep one in every handbag I own.
I’ve been wearing it for years, it’s the sort of coral that flatters you when you’re tired and warms everything up without any effort.
It’s L’Oréal Color Riche Satin in Magnetic Coral 373 - it works for days when I’m feeling a bit drab or if a simple navy outfit needs a boost.
It’s the easiest pick-me-up I know which is why I keep one in every bag - you can find it in most supermarkets and in Boots.
Save, don’t splurge.
Let me know if you’ve ever found a bargain beauty product that works as well as a designer one
#Midlifechic #Over60 #ColorRiche #CoralLipstick #SaveDontSplurge
Last week over 3 different reels I shared the detail of how I’ve kept my weight steady through my fifties (the question I’m asked more than any other on Instagram).
What everyone’s asked for next is what I actually eat, so here it is, along with a wrap-up of the whole series.
First things first: I’m not a nutritionist. This is simply the method that works for me.
I keep things protein rich, around 135g spread across three meals, on a balanced plate built from plenty of veg and a small portion of low-GI carbs.
I only drink alcohol when I’m out socially - I know it sounds odd to a lot of people but I don’t need it to relax at home.
I balance the eating with moving: strength training to keep my metabolism up, cardio to burn off some of what I’ve eaten, and a daily walk with Ted who gives me no say in it.
And every single night, six squares of dark chocolate to look forward to.
The last important point is periodisation. I have a weekend off every month where I completely let my hair down. And I make sure there’s always something up ahead in my calendar that I want to feel my best for.
None of it’s about deprivation or counting calories. That’s where the ongoing size 12 goal rather than a number on the scales comes in. If I aimed for a 10 or an 8 the fun would have to go too, so I’d rather keep the balance and keep something I can actually live with.
So how do you manage to balance it all? Share your tips - as midlife women we can learn from each other how to get along in the changing bodies we find ourselves in.
#midlifechic #midlifewomen #menopauseweight #intuitiveeating #bodyconfidence
I’ve missed this boy terribly during the year he’s been living in Spain.
When they were little I had this idea that as soon as my boys were 18 there would be a magic switch that would flick and I wouldn’t worry about them any more. They’d go into their lives and I’d go into mine… just like that.
But then I discovered that the worries sometimes get bigger when they’re not under your roof. And I realised just how much I love their company too.
It’s a bittersweet thing watching them fly isn’t it? You’re so proud of the people they’ve become and yet you miss them. So much.
Anyway, I’m delighted to have this one settling back into the nest again… now I have two at home… for a while…
Welcome home my boy ❤️
#midlife #midlifechic #ageisstyle #motherhood #emptynest
Long before the wardrobe and the blog, in 2013 there was a village hall and weight I’d been carrying since 2003.
I lost it slowly with a room full of women who all understood and I’ve kept it off for 13 years, not by magic, but by quietly balancing what I eat against how much I move and catching it early when it slides.
It isn’t effortless. If I go away for a fortnight, half a stone comes home with me. So I aim for 80% sensible and 20% unrepentant, I take a proper weekend off once a month and I keep something special on the horizon that I want to feel good for which beats starving myself in the weeks before a holiday and calling it discipline.
I’m not a dietician and I’m not selling you anything. This is simply what’s worked for my ordinary life. If you’ve found the thing that works for you I’d love to know what it is.
I’m back Monday with what I eat, then on Tuesday I’ll put this whole series into one saveable post for you to keep.
#midlifechic #midlifewomen #menopauseweight #intuitiveeating #bodyconfidence
This is the most useful thing I ever did for my body: I chose the size I wanted to be for the rest of my life and then stopped negotiating with myself about it.
The choice of a dress size rather than a weight is key. It gives me a bit of scope to let my hair down for a while but then rein it back in when I need to.
I went with a UK size 12, deliberately not the smallest I could manage because I wanted a size with room to live in… the puddings and the holidays and the not-measuring everything.
Too thin and I’d spend my life constantly maintaining it. This size lets me have a life I enjoy and the clothes I’ve already invested in.
Your number isn’t my number and that’s entirely the point, there’s no right size… only the one that’s right for you.
The magic isn’t the figure on the label it’s the deciding and the peace that comes once you’ve done it.
Next part tomorrow at six: how I began
#midlifechic #midlifewomen #menopauseweight #intuitiveeating #bodyconfidence
The question I’ve been asked most since I started sharing this midlife refresh of mine, is how I’ve stayed relatively slim. And tucked inside that question, nine times out of ten, is the assumption that it must come easily to me.
It really doesn’t. It isn’t luck or a fast metabolism, there’s nothing I can sell you. It’s a choice I made a long time ago and keep making, with focus… rather than willpower or punishment.
The straightforward answer is duller than you might hope - and kinder than you may fear.
I’m not an expert and I’m not selling you anything, just imagine that I’m a friend over coffee and I’ll tell you a bit about how it works for me each evening this week.
Part two lands tomorrow at six.
For now: what do you most want to ask?
#midlifechic #midlifewomen #menopauseweight #intuitiveeating #bodyconfidence
I’m trying to get this whole gearing-up-to-60 project off the ground and this is how it goes… I set up to film a little mascara review, get about thirty seconds in and the middle one ambles in looking for something in the fridge.
He’s back at home after a year working in Spain and the house has that fuller feel again, the one I’d half forgotten. Some of you will be familiar with the ‘unemptying’ nest and I’ll save my thoughts on that for another day.
For now though he’s just my favourite interruption… completely baffled by the wild world of mascaras!
#Midlifechic #Project60 #ThisIs59 #EmptyNest #FullHouseAgain
