A letter from a reader

At 68, I had not worn a dress in ten years, and my middle was the reason

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. Until last month I did not even wear them.

But three women asked me about this one at the allotment society lunch, and I have now told the story enough times that writing it down once seemed the quicker option.

Here is the admission. I had not worn a dress since 2016. Not to weddings, not in heatwaves, not once. If anyone asked, I said dresses were not me. That was not the truth.

The truth was my middle, and the fact that every dress I ever tried went straight to it.

Every one. They either clung to it or ballooned over it, and both were worse than trousers. So the dresses went, and in their place came the uniform. Trousers, and a decade of long tops, every one of them chosen for how far down it came.

How the dresses lost

It is worth saying how this happens, because I do not think I am unusual.

Dresses are cut to follow the body, and they follow it most closely at exactly the spot most of us would rather they glossed over. The shops' answer is either cling, which shows everything, or a tent, which looks like surrender.

Skimming, the thing you actually want, the fabric falling past the middle without touching it, is apparently the hardest thing in dressmaking. So women like me stop asking, and the long-top drawer fills up, and ten years go by.

What changed at the diamond wedding

In June we were at a diamond wedding do, and my sister-in-law arrived in a white dress covered in wildflowers, dandelions and cornflowers, looking wonderful. I should say plainly that she and I are built the same through the middle. Always have been.

So I asked her outright how she had managed it, and she told me. It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that makes clothes for women our age, and it is called the Georgina. The trick is the pleats. I ordered one that evening, laughing at myself the whole time. A floaty floral dress. On me.

She was right and I was wrong. The pleats begin up at the bodice and fall loose from there, so the front of the dress hangs away from the middle and skims straight past it. Nothing clings, nothing balloons. The short sleeves cover the tops of the arms, the length sits below the knee, and the whole thing is light and made from a soft premium material that behaves itself all day.

I put it on, stood in front of the wardrobe mirror, and wore a dress for the first time in ten years. To the allotment lunch, of all glamorous places, but you have to start somewhere.

What happened at the lunch

Six of us, sandwiches on the trestle table, the usual argument about the water butts.

Three women asked me about the dress. And Sylvia, who I have known for thirty years and who once watched me fall off a step ladder without comment, looked me up and down and said, "I did not know you wore dresses." Neither did I, Sylvia. Neither did I.

But the part I keep coming back to is quieter than that. I sat through the whole lunch and never once thought about my middle. Not adjusting, not checking, not arranging a cardigan over it. Ten years of managing that part of myself, and the dress simply took the job off me.

It has been on four times since. The yellow flowers help, I think. It is hard to feel self-conscious in a dress covered in dandelions.

Three things worth knowing

One. The pleats do the work. They fall from the bodice, not the waist, so there is no seam sitting on your middle at all. The dress touches your shoulders and then more or less leaves you alone, which is precisely what I wanted and never found.

Two. The sizing is honest. UK 8 to a 20, the same shape the whole way up, cut properly rather than just enlarged. Whoever made it has met a real woman.

Three. There are four colourways. I started with the yellow wildflower and I would again, but there is a red, and two blues, and I am told they go the same way the sizes do. Quickly.

About the price

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

The Georgina is £26.95. It was £50.00.

When something useful is suddenly half price I want to know why. The why 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. 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. One had written, "The pleats hang beautifully over my tummy and I forgot I was wearing it within the hour. First dress in years I have felt right in." Fair enough, I thought, and ordered.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

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

If you are a woman who "does not wear dresses," ask yourself honestly whether that was ever a preference, or whether it was a treaty you signed with your middle somewhere along the way. Mine was a treaty. I dressed around one part of my body for ten years and called it taste.

A dress will not change your life and I would not insult you by saying otherwise. But there is something in wearing what you actually like, rather than what manages you best, that I had gone a long time without. It cost £26.95 to find that out.

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.

There are two more dresses in the drawer now. It took a decade, and then a fortnight.

Pat