About Dayle 
@ArtfulCityStyle

“I was walking down the streets of New York. I was actually in a street fair, and a man walked up to me and said, ‘I’m a street fashion photographer, can I take your photo?’ And I said, ‘Sure’, because I was so thrilled that somebody actually asked my permission because typically people will just snap my picture without asking, and so he gave me his card and I didn’t think much about it and a couple weeks later I was in a boutique, and the boutique owner said to me, ‘Oh, I saw your photo on a fashion blog’ and I thought, ‘Aha’, and so I kept his card and I wrote to him and I said, ‘I’d love to see that photo’ and he sent it to me and it was great and I said, ‘Oh thank you so much!’ and he said, ‘Would you consider doing photo shoots with me?’ He said, ‘I’m really not a creep.’ He said, ‘I have actually been married for forty years and let’s try it. I think it will be fun.’ So that led to photo shoots every two weeks and he said, ‘Well, you have to do something with these photos that we’re taking. I’m gonna set up an Instagram account for you.’ So, we set up an Instagram account and within the first two years I had almost eighteen thousand followers and the whole thing has just exploded to more than 33 500 followers by 2019 and I’ve been having a ball with it.”

” ‘Oh, I’m too old to do this’ Never crossed my mind.”

“There are really two ways I put my outfits together. Either I will have an accessory that’s absolutely fabulous and I will build the entire outfit around the accessory, so there maybe certain colours in the accessory that I will then play with, I love to put together colours that you might not think would go together. For example, I recently posted a purple and green outfit which I thought was really a lot of fun.”

In my earlier days I once did a whole bedroom in purple and green. I love doing that kind of unusual colour combination, but what I really think is, is that accessories are the key to dressing. I really feel like they tie everything together. You can put two crazy colours together but if you find a necklace or if you find a scarf that puts those colours together it all makes sense.

A lot of times I will just start with the accessory but if I see a dress that I love or a sweater or a piece of clothing, the first thing I think when I see it is, ‘Ooh, what can I do with that?’ I always look at that and go, ‘Oh, this is a canvas, I can do something.’

I live in New York and everywhere there’s black and I love colour, so trying to find colour can be really difficult, so I have my share of black, I mean I am a New Yorker, that’s all right, and it’s a good kind of background for things, but I’m always looking for the colour. I’m always looking for something that’s exciting. I can make a black dress look different every single day of the week because I could accessorize it in a completely different way. That’s what’s fun about clothing.

If I would have to give people one piece of advice, I would say;

‘Have fun!’

About the photographer ~ Denton Taylor

“I’ve been interested in photography since my childhood. I bought my first camera when I was ten. However, like most straight guys, I wasn’t interested in fashion at all. Ansel Adams was my god. I guess I began to become aware of women’s fashion in my late forties. I’ve always looked at photography in museums and galleries, so at some point fashion photography began to sink in. Also, it’s hard to live in New York City, with its high end stores, galas and benefits, and parade of fashionable women everywhere from Fifth Avenue to SoHo, without becoming swept up.”

So I started attending New York Fashion Week, doing more portraits, reading Vogue Magazine and books on fashion, and following more fashion blogs. I also realized that what I really liked shooting was street style, and I saw that to do it well, I would have to be able to stop women on the street and ask permission to photograph. That takes a certain amount of confidence and self-esteem, and I don’t think I had that when I was twenty.

Various bloggers and fashion people started to notice my work (all of which was done in conjunction with my regular day job). One person in particular was Sylvia van de Logt, who runs the popular blog 40plusstyle. She was looking for a New York City-based photographer to send her photos of fashionably dressed women over forty. So we made an arrangement.

I met Dayle on May 31st, 2015. My wife and I were attending a street fair in Manhattan, and we both suddenly noticed a woman with yellow shoes, pants, and glasses, a blue blouse, and a fantastic multi-colored scarf. I asked her permission to take a photo, which was graciously granted. As I always do, I offered to send her the photo and handed her my card. And as happens 99% of the time, I never heard from her. But wait, there’s more, thanks to the power of social media!

I sent the photo off to Sylvia of 40plusstyle, and she was so impressed with Dayle that she ran the photo on her blog all by itself.

A woman that owns a clothing store in the neighborhood we both live, who knew Dayle as a customer, who also follows 40plusstyle, saw the photo and contacted Dayle. So Dayle finally contacted me.

At that time I had only recently gotten involved with Instagram. I had avoided it for quite a while, as the requirement that photos be posted in the square format seemed incompatible with full body fashion work, and the fact that photos had to be posted from a mobile device was no fun either if you were shooting with a real camera. Again, another blogger was helpful to me, in this case, Heidi Nazarudin of theambishionista, who sat me down and gently but firmly told me that I need to overcome my objections and get on Instagram. And so I did.

When I finally met Dayle, I knew I wanted to take more photos of her, but I wasn’t quite sure what I should do with them. And it hit me that Instagram was the perfect venue for a long term collaboration between a photographer and someone as stylish as Dayle. I helped her set up her Instagram account, and as they say, the rest is history.

It always makes me happy to hear Dayle say that I changed her life. At the same time, she changed mine. I’ve gone on to do many other collaborations with other people of all ages, races, and backgrounds (you can see many of them by clicking the link in my Instagram profile.)

People come, and people go, but Dayle is my longest and my greatest, and we’ve developed an incredible friendship. It’s been great fun all the way.”