A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised it was three years since we ate anywhere with a tablecloth

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 three different women asked me about a dress at an anniversary dinner, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started in June, when my husband suggested the nice restaurant by the river for our anniversary, the one with the tablecloths and the wine list, and I heard myself say it before I had even thought.

Let's just do the pub, I said. Again.

He did not argue, he never does. But later that evening I sat down and worked it out, and it had been three years since we ate anywhere properly nice. Three years of pubs and kitchen suppers. And the honest reason was not money, and it was not him. It was that I owned nothing that felt like an evening out, and rather than admit it, I had quietly shrunk our evenings to fit my wardrobe.

The eveningwear trap

Go and look at what the shops offer a woman my age for an evening out. There are two piles.

One pile is glamour cut for a thirty-year-old, slit to the thigh, no back, nothing to hold onto. The other pile is the stiff mother-of-the-bride sort of outfit, boxy jacket, matching everything, that makes you feel like you are attending your own retirement.

Elegant and our age, in the same garment, is somehow the hardest thing in fashion to find. So you stop looking, and then you stop booking, and you tell yourself you prefer the pub anyway.

Then I saw a woman my age in green

At Margaret's retirement dinner in July, there was a woman across the room, seventy if she was a day, in a long green dress that moved like water when she crossed to her table, and I could not stop looking. She looked elegant, comfortable, and completely herself, all at once.

I did something I never do and asked her about it in the cloakroom queue. It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and it is called the Morgan. I ordered it the next morning, fully prepared to send it back, because ruching and floaty layers sounded like things that would not want me.

They wanted me fine. The soft gathering through the middle flatters without gripping, the little sheer sleeves cover the tops of the arms and weigh nothing at all, and the long skirt has a light floaty layer over it that moves beautifully when you walk. It is made from a soft premium material, and the deep green is the sort of colour that looks expensive without trying.

And here is the bit that surprised me most. It is comfortable. Properly comfortable, eat-a-full-dinner comfortable, which I had assumed elegant dresses were not allowed to be.

What happened at the anniversary dinner

We rebooked the restaurant by the river. Tablecloths, the wine list, the lot.

My husband, who last commented on my clothes somewhere around 2009, told me I looked wonderful before we had even ordered. Three different women asked me about the dress over the course of the evening, one of them on her way past our table, which has never once happened to me in my life.

But the part I keep coming back to is how the evening felt. We talked for three hours. We ordered pudding. We booked the next one before we left. None of that is about a dress, except that it was the dress that got us through the door.

It has since done a birthday dinner and a warm evening at the theatre, and it was right both times.

Three things I have learned since

One. The ruching is the kind part. It gathers softly over the middle so everything is smoothed without anything being squeezed. You look composed and you feel free, which I had thought was a choice you had to make.

Two. Sheer sleeves are the answer to the arm question. Covered, but light, and they move. No cardigan, no bolero, no draughty shrug. Just done.

Three. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8/10 to a 16/18, the same graceful line the whole way through, not a different dress once you pass a certain number.

About the price

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

The Morgan is £37.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a dress that moves like this usually costs a great deal more than the dinner.

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 before it turns.

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. One woman had written, "It moves like a dream and the gathering hides everything I want hidden. I felt like myself again, only better." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden with a glass of something and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Think about the last time you suggested the casual option, and be honest about why. If any part of the answer is your wardrobe, then you are doing what I did, quietly shrinking your evenings to fit your clothes, and it is a poor trade.

Not because a dress changes anything. It does not. But sitting across a tablecloth from the man you have been married to for decades, feeling elegant instead of apologetic, is worth far more than £37.95, and I would know, because I went three years without it.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And once the summer stock has gone, it is gone until next year.

We have a standing table on the last Friday of the month now.

Maggie