A letter from a reader

At 67, I packed my dresses away last week and I am not going back to trousers

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 pair of dungarees at the garden centre café, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It starts with a small ceremony I suspect you also perform. Somewhere in September, the summer dresses get packed away. And with them goes the thing nobody says out loud, which is that a dress asks nothing of your middle. All summer long, nothing pressing, nothing pinching, nothing to undo discreetly after lunch.

Dress season ends. Being comfortable should not have to.

Then autumn arrives, and every single thing left in the wardrobe has a waistband. The fitted ones that pinch by lunchtime. The elastic ones that give up by November. Three months of it, minimum. Last week I stood in front of the trousers drawer and thought, no. Not this year.

How it happens

The shops decide this for us every year. Come September the dresses vanish and the trousers appear, and it is simply assumed that a woman will spend the cold months with something gripping her middle.

Nobody offers a third option. Or rather, they do, but it is hanging in the workwear aisle, and no one has ever suggested we look at it.

What I had wrong

I thought dungarees were for toddlers and decorators. I would have said so cheerfully. I had simply never stood in a pair.

Here is what I had not understood. Dungarees are the only garment in the shop with no waistband at all. The bib does the work, the straps carry the weight, and your middle is left entirely in peace, exactly like a dress. Put a roll neck underneath and a cardigan on top, and you are covered from chin to ankle, warm in layers, with nothing digging in anywhere.

The dress's understudy for the cold months. It was there the whole time, wearing the wrong label.

The pair I found

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

A soft washed grey pair, with a meadow of little wildflowers growing up from the hems, poppies and daisies and the odd butterfly, climbing to about the knee. The straps fasten with proper buttons and stay put. The leg is loose all the way down to a rolled cuff. And the print is what saves them, because plain dungarees look like you are about to paint a ceiling, and these look like an outfit somebody chose.

That last part matters more in autumn than it ever did in summer. When the sky goes grey for weeks on end, a few flowers climbing up your leg carry a bit of the summer garden along with you. I did not expect to care about that. I care about it a great deal.

What happened at the garden centre

I wore them exactly as described, cream roll neck underneath, cardigan on top, to the garden centre café on Tuesday.

Three women asked me about them before my tea had brewed. And my friend Jean, who does not hand out compliments, looked me over and said I had no business being that comfortable and that presentable at the same time.

I have decided to frame that one.

What I noticed more than the compliments was the lunch. We had soup and a scone and I sat there afterwards, and there was nothing to loosen, nothing to adjust, nothing making itself known at my waist. I had forgotten trouser season did not have to feel like trouser season.

Three things I have learned since

One. The bib is the whole point. Every trouser problem you have ever had lives at the waistband, and dungarees simply do not have one. The straps button, the bib sits flat, and after lunch you are exactly as comfortable as you were before it.

Two. They are built for layering. The cut is roomy on purpose. A long-sleeved top or a roll neck goes underneath without bunching, a cardigan goes over without a struggle, and the whole thing works from September to spring.

Three. The grey is not the only one. They do a whole run of prints in the same shape. I am already circling the sage green pair covered in little flower stems and bees. I have been told, by me, to wait until payday.

About the price

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

The dungarees are £37.95. They were £76.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that at that price the fabric would be stiff as a tent and the buttons would be painted plastic. It is not and they are not. The fabric is washed soft, the sort that gets softer still, the straps are properly finished, and the print is neatly done rather than smudged on. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is the sale price on their first autumn 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. One woman had written, “I live in mine from September onwards. Roll neck underneath, cardigan on top, and nothing pressing on my waist all day. I get asked about the flowers constantly.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have also packed the dresses away and felt your heart sink at the trousers drawer, you are not being silly. The dread is real and it lives at your waistband, and there is a garment with no waistband at all, under forty pounds, that solves it while looking like an outfit.

Not because dungarees will change your life. They will not. But there is something in getting to the end of an October day as comfortable as you were in June, and being complimented on it into the bargain, that I had quietly assumed was not on offer at our age. It is.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the first autumn stock is already going. They run from an S to a 5XL in the same relaxed shape, which in real money is about an 8/10 to a 22/24, and once this batch is gone it is gone before the proper cold even arrives.

The dresses are packed away. The waistbands can stay in the drawer with them.

Maggie