A letter from a reader

At 68, I owned exactly one dress, and it was for funerals

I did not notice it happening, which is the only defence I have. I am 68, I keep an allotment, I walk a dog that pulls, and I live in trousers, because trousers make sense. And at some point in the last ten years, one sensible decision at a time, the dresses left my wardrobe until there was one hanger with a dress on it. Black. Knee-length. For funerals. I had been to four in it and not one party.

Then three different women asked me about a dress at Jean and Malcolm’s golden wedding on Saturday, and I have given the answer enough times now to want it written down once.

Here is how a woman ends up with one dress. Every happy do that came along, a christening, a retirement, a fiftieth, got the same answer. Trousers, and what I called a nice top. It was comfortable, it was me, and it was over in a minute. And in every photograph from those ten years I am the woman at the end of the row who looks like she has come straight from work and is going straight back. The black dress, meanwhile, was the only dress I owned, and it was the wrong mood for everything except the thing it was bought for.

Trousers and a nice top for the happy days, and one black dress for the sad ones. I had not noticed I had stopped buying anything for the good days.

Nobody decides to own one dress. It happens quietly, and then a golden wedding invitation lands on the mat and you open the wardrobe and there it is.

Then Brenda turned up to the allotment in one

My sister-in-law Brenda came to help me lift the onions in June, and she came in a long soft green dress with a V at the front and sleeves to the elbow, which for the allotment is not what you would call practical, and I said so. She said she had been to a christening lunch and could not be bothered to change, and then she bent, and lifted, and carried a trug to the car, and the dress did not ride up, gape or get in her way once. I asked. She said, it goes over your head, and it stays where you put it.

It is called the Adrienne, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The shop calls the colour Blue. It is not blue. It is sage green, and it is lovely. I ordered it that evening, fully expecting to send it back.

It did not go back. The black one has company now.

What happened at the golden wedding

I wore it on Saturday with flat sandals and my mother’s brooch, and I stood in a marquee for four hours, sat on a folding chair, and danced once, under protest.

Three different women asked me where it was from before the speeches. And Sylvia, who has known me thirty years and does not hand out compliments, said I looked like I had made a day of it. From Sylvia, that is practically a medal.

Here is why it works, as far as I can tell. It goes on over your head and there is nothing to do up, no zip, no buttons, no fiddling behind your back. The plain band at the waist gives me a middle, and the skirt falls from it wide and soft, so nothing clings. The V is deep enough to look like an occasion and edged with a plain band so it stays put. The sleeves come to the elbow and cover the tops of my arms, which at 68 is not vanity, it is policy. It comes to the ankle, so my legs are nobody’s business. And it is light, properly light, so four hours in a marquee in August was fine.

I have had it on twice since. Sunday lunch, and the garden centre, which is not what it is for, and I did not care. It is the first dress I have owned in ten years that I put on because I wanted to.

Three things worth knowing

One. It is a dress that behaves like trousers. Over the head, nothing to do up, stays where it is put when you bend or sit or lift a trug of onions. That is the whole reason a trouser woman can wear it.

Two. The band is the trick. A plain band at the V and a plain band at the waist. It sounds like nothing. It is what makes the print look like a decision and gives you a shape instead of a tent.

Three. Two colours, honest sizes. The sage I own, and a white with a blue print, from a UK 8 to an 18, the same shape all the way up. I went back for the white. Brenda has both, and wears the sage to lift onions.

About the price

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so I will tell you the price was the bit that made me suspicious.

The Adrienne is £27.95. It was £56.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because a long dress that looks like this in a department store is a good deal more than that, and half the time it is a shape that only works on the mannequin.

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 do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people, so I read on. One woman had written, “Bought it for a wedding, wore it to a barbecue the week after. Soft, covers my arms, and I did not think about it once.” That was the one that decided it for me.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with the kettle on and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If the only dress in your wardrobe is the black one, you have not given up on dresses. You have given up on the ones that ask something of you, and quite right. This one asks nothing, and it is the first thing I have owned in ten years that is for the good days.

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

I own two dresses now. One of them is for the good days.

Pat