A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised I had stopped buying anything with a bit of fun in it

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But four different women asked me about this dress at a family barbecue a fortnight ago, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started when my granddaughter was showing me photographs of herself on her phone, all colour and pattern and fun, and then we scrolled back to some of me.

Nan, why are you wearing navy in every single one?

She did not mean anything by it. But she was right. Photograph after photograph of me in navy, black, stone, one sensible dark dress after another, at every party and every christening for years.

I did not decide that. Nobody decides to become the woman in navy in the background of the photographs. It happens quietly, one sensible purchase at a time.

How it happens

Somewhere in your fifties a little voice starts up whenever you reach for something cheerful. It says that is for younger women. It says you will look as though you are trying too hard. It says play it safe.

And the shops agree with the little voice. Everything offered to women our age is dark, or beige, or described as flattering, which we all know by now means forgettable.

So you buy the navy one. Again. And you tell yourself it is elegant, which it is, in the way that disappearing is elegant.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong. I thought spots and bright colour would look silly on a woman my age. Mutton dressed as lamb, as my mother used to say.

It turns out that is only true of the wrong spots and the wrong colour. A hand-painted, softened polka dot is not the same as a loud novelty print. A warm, sunny yellow is not the same as a garish one. And a relaxed grown-up shape carries both of them so that they read as cheerful rather than childish.

Fun and grown-up were never opposites. I had just never been shown the version that was both, and it took me until 67 to find it.

The dress is called the Leah

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

The dress is called the Leah. A sleeveless midi with a cream, black-spotted top and a warm block of sunny yellow through the skirt, finished with a soft sand and cream hem. It is playful without being silly, which is a harder thing to get right than it sounds.

It is light and easy and it drapes rather than clings, skimming straight past everything you would rather not discuss. The spots draw the eye first, then the yellow, and somewhere in all that nobody is studying the shape of you at all.

And it does not crease if you sit down in it, which anyone who has arrived somewhere looking like they travelled in a laundry basket will appreciate.

What happened at the barbecue

I wore it for the first time to a family barbecue, with flat sandals.

Four women asked me where it was from. Four. One of them was Marion, who I have known for years and who has never once commented on anything I have worn.

She said I looked like the fun one for a change. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was the photographs afterwards. For the first time in years I am not the dark shape at the edge. I am the one in the yellow, in the middle, smiling.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk down for the paper, and felt completely myself in it.

Three things I have learned since

One. Softened is the secret. A hand-painted spot and a warm dusty yellow read as tasteful. It is the hard, bright, novelty version of both that looks like fancy dress, and this is not that.

Two. Sleeveless is a relief in the heat. I had been putting up with sleeves I did not want in July for no reason. A clean sleeveless cut is cooler and, it turns out, perfectly fine.

Three. Cheerful is not the same as young. The dress does not make me look twenty-five, and I would not want it to. It makes me look like someone enjoying herself, which is a different and much nicer thing.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Leah is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay more than that on the high street for a plain summer dress that will be misshapen by August.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a summer sale to shift the season's stock.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. Real people, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

Then I found myself looking forward to wearing it, which had not happened with a dress in a long time.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and look at the photographs from the last few summers. If you are in navy in every one, standing a little to the side, that is not your taste. It is a habit you fell into because nobody offered you anything better, and you are allowed to break it.

It will not change your life. But being the one in the yellow rather than the dark shape at the edge does something, and I would rather you had that too.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And it runs from a UK 8 all the way to a 24, the same easy cut the whole way up, which I wish more places would bother with.

I am in the middle of the photographs now, in the yellow.

Maggie