How Fashion’s Coolest Octogenarian Influencers Helped Red Wing Kick Things Up a Notch

Make a list of Instagram’s biggest fashion influencers these days and you’ll no doubt come up with names such as Lauren Conrad, Cole Sprouse and Olivia Palermo. These style luminaries tend to have upper-crust backgrounds (Palermo was a Manhattan socialite) and make their homes in cool places (Conrad has owned homes in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades). Of course, they are also young. (Sprouse, at 28, still seems to be waiting for whiskers to appear on his chin.) For better or worse, attributes like privilege and youth are simply necessary preconditions for a career in influencing fashion—and a massive reason why brands seek to work with them. So, when legacy footwear brand Red Wing turned the spotlight on two up-and-coming fashion stars in their early 80s, faces were stunned. Let’s just say they’re not trust fund kids from Bel Air. Sho-er and Wan-ji Chang (aged 83 and 84, respectively) are a husband-wife duo who run the Want Show laundry in Taiwan’s Taichung City. They don’t have much money, barely speak English and—until recently—had nothing to do with Instagram. Demystifying Gen Z: Are Influencers Their Main Source of Fashion Inspo? Staking their claim to coolness Nonetheless, these octogenarians are as authentically cool a pair of influencers as Red Wing could hope to find. With the help of their grandson, the duo have built a fast-growing Instagram following by modeling abandoned garments left unclaimed at their laundromat. The images not only show off a funky and unique sense of style, but they also fit nicely with the messaging of Red Wing’s first global campaign, Out of Fashion. As proponents of "circular fashion," the couple was a natural fit for Red Wing. “Our declaration with this campaign is that Red Wing doesn't follow fast-fashion trends,” Red Wing's head of brand and creative Aaron Seymour-Anderson told Adweek, “so there was just an immediate connection with them from the beginning.” Rolled out last week, Out of Fashion “celebrates those who live life on their own terms.” The effort features other cultural iconoclasts such as Erin Brown, the “concrete cowgirl” who rides a horse around Philadelphia. But the Changs were a find for another reason. “They’re really pushing the circular and sustainable fashion message,” said Seymour-Anderson. That happened to be a message that Red Wing—whose heavy-duty boots can last for decades—was also pushing. “Our product is built and designed to stand the test of time, so there was a shared ethos with them from the beginning,” Seymour-Anderson added. Unlikely influencers Unlike other Instagram fashion influencers, the Changs did not set out to be self-promoters. Facing the problem of what to do with hundreds of forgotten garments, the couple simply began wearing the leftover clothing. When the pandemic hit, business slowed and they found themselves with time to kill and a desire to recoup lost revenue. “They had nothing to do,” their grandson Reef Chang told the New York Times last July. “I saw how bored they were and wanted to brighten up their lives.” He began taking photos of his grandparents and posted the images on social media. The Changs’ jaunty panache quickly won a following and inadvertently became a source of inspiration for recyclable fashion. Seymour-Anderson said finding the couple was “serendipity,” a fact that was surely helped by the size of their following (136,000 last summer, and now 649,000). Thanks to Red Wing, the Changs have replaced their Converse sneakers with Classic Mocs in honey and black—$300 footwear that work so well with their outfits that it’s hard to believe the couple didn't pick out the shoes on their own. Today, the Changs have 649,000 followers on Instagram. But wearing work boots with dressy cardigans and striped skirts is a trend that started even before the Changs. “Today, we are seeing Red Wing boots appear in the classes of very fashion-forward individuals,” the style blog Gentleman’s Gazette commented last year. “Those who choose to wear the brand casually and opt to wear the more fashionable heritage collection are often branded as hipsters.” Red Wing also has other plans with the eighty-something hipsters in Taiwan. The company is partnering with the Changs to support their Want Show Redefine Project, a new platform through which Taiwan’s laundromats can sell their unclaimed duds and, with some luck, continue influencing the fashion world. TikTok Fashion Month Kicks Off, Runs Through March 18