I have a problem with themed sweaters. That probably makes me sound like a curmudgeon to some people, especially this time of year. I think those little sweaters decorated with teddy bears and elves with candy canes are very sweet when worn by little children. And that’s where they belong.

On a mature adult they make me nervous. My friends and I sometimes do a fashion disaster alert over the holidays, looking for grown-ups in reindeer sweatshirts, Santa sweaters and jingle bell earrings. You can find them even in San Francisco, a city that takes pride in being fashionably astute and where even the dogs don’t go in for frivolous dressing.

Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well.

I know we’re just being wicked and they’re just having fun getting into the spirit but adults in kid clothes put themselves at great risk of looking silly. And worse, of being called cute.

This is a concern that goes way beyond holiday dressing. Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well. After a while it brings only unwelcome attention. When an older person calls a younger person “cute,” it is a compliment. When a younger person calls an older person “cute,” it is condescending. The same with referring to a person of noteworthy vintage as “adorable” or “just darling.” Pretty soon they’ll be patting you on the head and asking, “How are we today?”

This matter of how to dress after a certain age so as not to create a negative image is a favorite subject of mine. I started making a list of fashion warnings when writing about women over age 50. No one is deliberately going for the image of “instant old lady.” Department stores do not have special sections marked “matronly and dowdy.” But mistakes are made.

I started the list out with “friends don’t let friends wear knee-highs.” And added such casualties as cruise-style polyester pantsuits, weak pastels, long denim skirts and matching sweatshirts and sweatpants. I pointed out that women of my generation, blessed with jeans that know how to flatter a mature bottom, dress younger than our mothers and grandmothers. As one over-50 friend colorfully put it, “If we dressed today like some of our mothers did when they were our age we’d look like drag queens.”

Now that I’ve quit my regular day job and joined the ranks of the so-called retired, I’ve expanded my focus on what to wear when you’re no longer required to pull on pantyhose and some serious tailored outfit every morning. Do we now simply approach each day of the week as “Casual Friday?”

My friend Lee in Ohio, who nixes caftans and sensible lace up shoes, counseled, “If someone knows you’re retired by what you’re wearing, you’re wearing the wrong stuff.”

We may no longer have someone else’s dress code to adhere to but people are watching. You don’t want the UPS guy catching you in that old pink bathrobe with the orange juice stains and think all you do is mope around and watch TV.

My artist pal Marylu continues to wears short skirts and buys her glittery T-shirts in the teen section of Macy’s. She vows to forever “dress in an age inappropriate manner.” That’s one way to go. Eccentric, arty and individual certainly beats matronly.

Or go for the shock and awe approach, like the wonderful late Jeanne Claude, the artist wife of Christo, whose startling hair varied from pumpkin to pomegranate and who didn’t look at all retiring. And who no one would have ever dared call cute.

It was surprising news that fashion designer Eileen Fisher is leaving her old love for a younger woman but those things happen. I sighed when I read that the New York designer known for her sophisticated styles and lush colors had decided to leave behind her Boomer sisters to go after a younger, cooler customer.

When I was young and cool I wasn’t an Eileen Fisher fan. When I got older and decided to occasionally treat myself I was drawn to Eileen Fisher. First by her models and then her clothes.

The models in Eileen Fisher ads were real women – high school principals and airline pilots. Some of them had silver hair and wore glasses. They looked brainy and fit and confident. They walked on the beach. They held books in their arms. They even smiled. They didn’t look angry and starved like other models. Nor did they stand pigeon toed in stilettos, like some porn star. They were grown-ups.

Eileen Fisher was one of us. She too favored classy but uncomplicated clothes, the kind you don’t have to yank on and adjust but that made you feel pretty and even hip. I liked what I read about her – that she gave her employees yoga classes and health and education benefits and helped women in poor countries start businesses.

Her clothes and marketing style portrayed women of her generation in a new way.

If you were going to describe a stylish classic American woman you might handily refer to her as an Eileen Fisher type.

Her models had both age and flair. Here was one shrewd business person who did not avoid the aging market but invested in it and celebrated it.

Imagine, then, our surprise to find that others thought her clothes had “as much style and shape as a burqa.” That’s what it said in a New York Times story that reported the Eileen Fisher line was trading in its traditional base to appeal to the youth market. This new line would be different from the old Eileen Fisher line that was “designed for graying bobos who dabbled in ceramics and had lifetime subscriptions to the New Yorker.”

Ouch, said this graying bobo - after I looked up the word “bobo,” which is a word coined by conservative columnist David Brooks, short for bourgeois bohemian. Bobo or not, I do not feel scorned by Eileen Fisher. I have enough of her clothes in my closet and really, in this economy I don’t see a big shopping spree in my future.

If she wants to go back to her drawing board — the new line is to include biker jackets and leggings – then she should. She’s 58, a good age to try something new.

But I’m just sorry that she feels like she has to go after the kids like everyone else. Maybe she’ll do great with the younger, cooler crowd who will one day say, “hey, where are those stylish black dresses and asymmetrical sweaters you used to make?” I’ll mostly miss the women in her ads who look like people my age and wear clothes that don’t require a full-length industrial strength undergarment.

She won’t miss me. I was not a heavy investor. I bought some sweaters on sale and once paid full price for a smart ivory colored jacket for my daughter’s wedding. I still wear it, mostly with jeans. My last Eileen Fisher score was a black linen shirt from a consignment shop in San Francisco. It cost 12 bucks and looks nothing like a burqa.

The headline writers say that Eileen Fisher is giving herself a facelift. Well, you know how those can go. Sometimes they work and sometimes they just make you look funny. Then there is no going back.

“Where are you taking those good black jeans,” asked my husband as he checked out the pile of clothes at the front door. They’re too short in the waist and too belled in the bottom, I explained. And these hiking boots kill my feet. And the mango colored shirt? Well, we agree that was a regrettable purchase.

The occasion was a clothes swap at a friend’s backyard in Forestville. The basics of the swap are pretty simple. All the guests bring items from their own closets that they’re ready to give up. The clothes are not tattered or hopelessly outdated. You might admire them on a friend, just not on yourself anymore. If ever.

I don’t know the origin of the clothes swap but it may have started in the pioneer days when women had to make do with one dress all the way from New Jersey to California and somewhere in western Kansas one yelled out “I’m so sick of this rag,” prompting the woman in the next wagon to yell out, “I’ll take it” and with that, one ripped off her gray muslin and the other her yellow calico and they swapped.

By the time everyone got to Sacramento the word had spread and someone had a party in her backyard and all the women got silly and tried on each other’s clothes and had something to drink and came home with a brand new look. When their husbands inquired, “Where did you get that?” they could say, “This old thing?”

It’s the best kind of shopping. You are surrounded by personal advisors who won’t hesitate to urge you to “take it, you can wear it with jeans.” Or to frown and say, “leave it.” It costs nothing. You’re recycling. And you might make a score. Like I did with my new pencil skirt that can go with sandals or boots and according to observers makes me look tall. And which my friend Maureen is ever so grateful to never wear again.

What’s left at the end of the day gets taken to the local hospice thrift store, so even though you haven’t spent any money you do end up stimulating the economy.

It’s the best kind of shopping.

You would not mistake this scene for a garden party in spite of the Jamaican music, wine and food and women spilling out of their underwires. On the clothesline by the garage were coats, pantsuits and near-formal dresses suitable for fund-raisers. Along the deck was a lineup of shoes - mother-of-the-bride wedding sandals, running shoes bought online but never worn and a dreamy pair of cowboy boots that no amount of straining and pushing were going to fit a size 9.

On the blanket next to the vegetable garden was a pile of summer sweaters where a couple of teachers held forth on the California budget. Tank tops and T-shirts stretched out on a blanket by the pool where some of us wished for a return to shoulder pads. There wasn’t much action at the lingerie table except for a tasty discussion over whether nightgowns or T-shirts are better for sleeping but dont’ do much for your sex life.

The clothes swap is such a good idea I don’t know why men don’t try it. They wouldn’t need hardly as many tables. Maybe one for khaki pants, one for button down shirts, one for those baggy shirts with pictures of surfboards and martini glasses. Here’s an image: a bunch of men walking around in skivvies and black socks asking if plum goes with their hair color.