This Week at The After Party: The Glow That Grows

 🥂 Opening Toast 

“To the fine lines and the wisdom that came with them.”

Because when the world told us our value had an expiration date, we rewrote the label. And now we’re aging out loud, with power, grace, and better lighting.

Let’s be clear: we’re not trying to “age gracefully” like it’s a punishment with manners. We’re aging brilliantly, on our terms, in full color, and yes, still taking up space.

We live in a world that spends billions trying to convince us that beauty has a sell-by date. The global anti-aging industry is worth over $60 billion, and growing, and much of it is built on fear.

Fear of wrinkles.
Fear of irrelevance.
Fear of no longer being seen.

But here’s what the industry doesn’t want us to know:

📈 Many women over 50 feel more confident than they did in their 20s.

🎯 In fact, many of us don’t even want to look younger, we want to look like ourselves, fully lived-in.

And when it comes to influence?

🚀 Women over 40 control over $15 trillion in spending power globally. That’s not “invisible” — that’s unstoppable.

So why are we still being told to fade quietly?

Aging isn’t about decline. It’s about ascension. We get clearer. Sharper. Sexier.

We know what we like and we say it without second-guessing ourselves. We’ve survived heartbreaks, career pivots, identity evolutions, and bad brow trends. We’ve earned every line, and every lesson.

Diane von Fürstenberg — our guest this week — once said,

“I never knew what I wanted to do, but I always knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.”

And maybe that’s the real glow-up.

Not chasing youth, but becoming the woman you once imagined, without apology.

This isn’t an anti-aging manifesto. It’s a pro-presence one.
Because beauty isn’t something you once had, it’s something you keep growing into.

So here’s to us —
The women who show up wrinkle-forward and worry-free.
The ones who glow differently, because we’ve lived deeply.
The ones who know that every laugh line is a love letter to the life we’ve built.

You’re not too late. You’re not past your prime.
You’re the main event. And the glow? It’s just getting started..

💣 Truth Bomb

Your beauty isn’t on a countdown. It’s on a climb.

We’ve been conditioned to see aging as a slow fade into irrelevance, as if beauty lives only in tight skin and fast metabolism.

But real beauty?

It sharpens with time. It becomes more defined, more specific, more unmistakably you. The kind of beauty that doesn’t chase attention, it commands it.

This isn’t about refusing to age. It’s about refusing to disappear. The lines on your face aren’t flaws; they’re storylines.

Your presence has weight, your energy has texture, and your beauty has roots. If youth is the glow of possibility, aging is the glow of power; earned, grounded, and undeniable.

We’re not clinging to what was. We’re claiming what is, and what’s still becoming.

🔍 Ask Yourself

• When did you first start believing beauty had an expiration date?

• Have you ever apologized — even silently — for showing signs of aging?

• What would it look like to see aging as your evolution, not your erosion?

✍️ Challenge of The Week

📸 Mirror Moment Challenge:
Take 30 seconds each morning this week to look at yourself without judgment; no filters, no critiques, no hiding.

Say out loud:“I am not losing beauty, I’m gaining depth.”

Then snap a selfie. Keep it for you, or post it with #TheGlowThatGrows and tag @theafterparty.

Let’s normalize seeing ourselves as we are, and loving it.

📚 Want To Go Deeper?

Here are a couple of thought-provoking reads that reinforce this week’s theme:

1. 🔗 “At 59, I’m Embracing Aging With a Positive Attitude & Encouraging Other To Do” – Prevention
   Highlighting aging and the unique ways that the passage of time has made the lives of women everywhere more beautiful, vibrant, and meaningful.

2. 🔗 “Positive Aging: Redefining What Aging Successfully Means” – Positive Psychology
   Positive aging is about living our life as a continuous journey of self-discovery and purpose (Joshanloo, 2023) and learning to adapt to changes.

🪞 Mirror Talk

“Your glow has nothing to do with youth. It’s about presence.”

We’ve all been sold the myth that glow = collagen.
But presence; real, grounded, magnetic presence, is the rarest glow of all. That comes with experience, not erasure.

👑 The Guest List

Diane Von Fürstenberg — Fashion icon. Feminist force. Face of the era-less woman.

Diane von Fürstenberg doesn’t just design clothes, she designs power. Best known for inventing the legendary wrap dress in the 1970s, Diane built an empire by helping women feel strong, sexy, and self-defined.

At just 28, she landed a Newsweek cover with the headline “The most marketable woman since Coco Chanel,” and she’s been rewriting the rules of femininity ever since.

Born in Brussels in 1946 to a Holocaust survivor, she married into German aristocracy (yes, the Fürstenberg is real), but didn’t stay in the shadows.

She built her own name and legacy.

As founder of the global fashion brand DVF, her work has always celebrated the independence, sensuality, and resilience of women, long before it became a tagline.

Her influence reaches far beyond fashion.

Diane served as Chairwoman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) from 2006 to 2019, mentoring generations of talent.

She launched the DVF Awards to honor extraordinary women across the globe.

And in her memoir, “The Woman I Wanted to Be,” she made it clear that aging isn’t something to fear, it’s something to lean into, with style.

Now in her 70s, Diane von Fürstenberg is still that woman, fiercely present, unfiltered, and leading with legacy.

She doesn’t “fight” aging, she wears it like a statement piece. And if anyone embodies The Glow That Grows, it’s her.

🔍 Want to Learn More About Diane?

📖 “The Woman I Wanted to Be”
“An intriguing page-turner filled with revelations” (More), von Fürstenberg reflects on her extraordinary life—from her childhood in Brussels to her days as a young, jet-set princess, to creating the dress that came to symbolize independence and power for generations of women.

🎧 Owning It: The Secret to Life & Work with Diane von Furstenberg
In this candid conversation, Diane discusses how she built her business from the ground up at a time when few women were doing so and how she overcame roadblocks to become one of the most recognizable names in fashion.

 🎥 CNBC Conversation with fashion legend Diane von Furstenberg
In this interview, Diane discussed the 15th anniversary of the DVF Awards and the enduring success of her iconic wrap dress, which celebrated 50 years in 2024.

 🎁 Party Favors

Pro-Aging Skincare Brands We’re Loving: Let’s ditch the "anti-aging" BS. These brands get it.

📚 Try it! Stripes by Naomi Watts - The product that stands out for us is their Full Monty Squalane Hydrating Vitamin C Body Oil. Crafted with hydrating Squalane, antioxidant-rich acai oil, vitamins C and E, and Kakadu plum, it nourishes and illuminates your skin

 👚 Buy it! Cocokind - We particularly love their Electrolyte Water Cream, an Allure Best of Beauty Winner 2025. Our electrolyte-powered lightweight moisturizer delivers breathable hydration that visibly calms stressed skin and restores a healthy-looking glow. 

🧘‍♀️ Use It! Ursa Major - Check out their PM Power Pair, their Lunar Bloom Retinal Serum and their Alpine Rich Cream. This powerhouse duo works the night shift so you can wake up to your best skin.

📣 Last Call…

Before we turn the lights up...

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Until next week,