Ageless Style: 60s

It began, as so many great love affairs do, with a red dress. “I was almost 15, living in Holland, and every day on my way to school, I passed a shop with this incredible red dress in the window,” says Micheline Burg. “It was a party dress. I had no party to wear it to. I just wanted it! So I asked my dad if I could have it for my 15th birthday. To my surprise, he said ‘yes.’ I’ll never forget it.” Indeed, some 50 years later, Burg stands up in the Dolce & Gabbana boutique at Holt Renfrew, where she’s worked for 20 years, and twirls around in an imaginary frock.

That great love affair with fashion is still going strong. “I love clothes!” she exclaims five times in 40 minutes. And while there are a few things she no longer dares to don (“I won’t wear short shorts—I know when to quit”), her devotion to white shirts, luxe stilettos and body-con ensembles hasn’t faltered in decades. “You have to dress in what makes you feel good,” says Burg, citing with pride her ability to pull off plunging necklines. “You don’t have to turn 60 and start wearing frumpy things.”

Burg’s exact age is an expertly maintained mystery. She eats healthfully and exercises and stretches every day, and she looks as slender and exotic as an orchid. When she picks up a dangerously slinky Jean Paul Gaultier jumpsuit and says she’ll wear it on a trip to Turks and Caicos, I believe her.

Mr. Gaultier is Burg’s number one designer, followed closely by the usual European suspects—Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Armani and, of course, Dolce & Gabbana. She gushes over the “incredible, beautiful” work of daring contemporaries Alexander McQueen and Sonia Rykiel. And she has fond memories of Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler and other ’80s greats—though, when asked to recall her favourite decade, she says it’s “now!”

“Certain things I have done and it’s like, no, I don’t want to repeat,” she says. “But it’s inspiring to see the younger generations, because for them, it’s all new again.”

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