A letter from a reader

At 68, every hot day came down to bare arms or a cardigan I cooked in

I will be honest with you from the start. Writing this feels daft. I am 68, I grow vegetables, and I do not review dresses.

But three women asked me about this one at my niece's wedding, and I have now told the story so many times that writing it down once seemed the quicker option.

The day it all came to a head was my grandson's birthday in July, out in the garden, on the hottest day of the year. Everyone else sat there in something light. I sat there in a long-sleeved navy top, because it was the only thing I owned that covered my arms, and I paid for it all afternoon.

Grandma, aren't you boiling in that?

He is six. He was not being cheeky, he was asking a sensible question. And the honest answer was yes, I was boiling, and I had chosen to be, because the alternative was my bare arms out in front of everybody, and I was not having that.

I had been making that same choice for years without ever calling it what it was. A choice between being covered and being comfortable, with no third option on offer anywhere I shopped.

The choice nobody talks about

It sounds a small thing until it is your summer.

Sleeveless meant a day of tugging and folding my arms and never once sitting easy. So sleeveless went.

A cardigan on top solved the arms and created a new problem, because twenty minutes in I would be red in the face and wishing I had stayed home with the radio.

So I did what plenty of us do. I bought dark, long-sleeved, roomy things and I sweated through every warm day in them, and I told myself I ran hot and that was that. It was not that. It was the clothes.

What I had been getting wrong

I had decided, somewhere along the line, that covered and cool could not both be had. Pick one. I picked covered, every time, and cooked.

What I had never questioned was the how. A full sleeve wraps the arm and holds the heat against it. A cardigan is a second layer over the whole of you. Both cover, and both cook, and I thought that was the end of the matter.

Then I came across this dress, and the penny dropped. One loose layer, draped over the top of the arm rather than wrapped round it, covers everything I want covered and lets the air do its work. That is all it took. Nobody on the high street had ever bothered to cut one for me.

The dress is called the Judith

It comes from Manchester Boutique, a small British firm that makes clothes for women our age and, on this evidence, actually thinks about us while doing it.

The Judith is a floaty dress, midi to just below the knee, with a soft cape layer that falls over the shoulders and the tops of the arms. There is a gentle elasticated waist that sits where it should instead of digging in, and it is cut properly for a fuller figure, not just made bigger and left at that. Mine is the bright print, which is further than I have gone in years, and I am glad I went.

It is light, it lets the air through, and it floats over me rather than sticking. There is nothing to pull down, nothing to rearrange, and nothing extra to carry for when my arms want covering, because they already are.

It is a simple idea done properly. Most good things are.

What happened at the wedding

First outing was my niece's wedding. Flat sandals in the afternoon, good earrings for the evening, done.

Three women asked where the dress was from. One of them was Sylvia, who I have known for thirty years and who once watched me fall off a step ladder without comment. She asked twice. From Sylvia, that is practically a medal.

But the part I keep coming back to is not the compliments. It is that I sat through a warm August afternoon, outdoors, arms covered, and never once thought about either the heat or the arms. I could not tell you the last summer do where that was true.

Next morning I had it back on for the allotment. It managed the runner beans as well as it managed the wedding, which tells you most of what you need to know.

Three things worth knowing

One. The cape earns its place. It is not a frill. It is the reason you can leave the cardigan at home, and once you have had one you will look at every other summer dress and wonder why it has not.

Two. The sizing is done right. UK 8 to 24, and it is the same considered shape at every size, not a straight enlargement. Whoever cut it has met a real woman.

Three. It does not care where you wear it. Wedding, allotment, shops, garden. Same dress, no adjustments, right everywhere. Clothes like that are rare and I hold on to them.

About the price

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so this part matters to me.

The Judith is £28.95. It was £48.00.

When something useful is suddenly cheap I want to know why. The why here is ordinary enough. They are a small boutique selling directly, nobody in the middle taking a slice, and the summer sale is them clearing the season's stock before autumn. Sensible practice, and it works in our favour.

I read the reviews before parting with anything, because I do not trust a perfect score. This is not one. Just over three hundred reviews, sitting at 4.2 stars, which reads like real women with real opinions, most of them good. The same points kept coming up, arms covered without a cardigan, cool all day, true to size.

I ordered a second print the following week, which is not a thing I do lightly.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

This is what I would tell you, kettle on, no fuss.

If your summers have narrowed down to the same dark sleeves and the same quiet sweltering, because bare arms are not for you and cardigans cook you, then the problem is not you and it is not the weather. It is that nobody cut you a third option. Now somebody has.

A dress will not change your life and I would not insult you by saying otherwise. But being comfortable outdoors in August, covered, without giving your arms a single thought, is worth more than it sounds. I had forgotten how much.

Two practical notes. The sale is on now and the middle sizes always go first. And when the summer stock is gone, it is gone, and you will be waiting until next year like I nearly was.

The cardigan has not left the drawer since.

Pat