A letter from a reader

At 67, I looked properly put-together about twice a year

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 a dress at lunch in Chester a fortnight ago, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with the photo albums. I spent a rainy Sunday sorting years of family photographs into some kind of order, and somewhere around the third album I noticed something I could not unsee. In the wedding photographs and the Christmas photographs, I look lovely. Dressed, done, myself.

In every ordinary photograph, I look like I was interrupted doing the housework.

Twice a year, put-together. The other three hundred and sixty-three days, the easy shapeless things. And I do not remember ever choosing that. It chose itself, one comfortable Tuesday at a time.

The gap nobody makes clothes for

Here is what I worked out, sat there with the albums. There are easy clothes, and they are made dowdy. And there are smart clothes, and they are made like hard work, things that need ironing and holding in and thinking about.

Nobody, it seemed, made anything for the enormous space in the middle, for a Tuesday lunch or a Thursday coffee, when you would like to look like yourself but cannot be doing with a performance.

So the easy things won, day after day, and looking nice got saved for occasions, like the good china.

For once, I was the one asking

Ann has never once commented on anything I have worn, but I have spent years quietly noticing what she wears, because she always looks done, even at the supermarket. In thirty years I had never asked. That week, with the albums fresh in my mind, I finally did.

The answer was Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and the dress she named is called the Joan. I ordered it that evening, in the red, fully expecting it to arrive needing an iron and a slip and effort.

It arrived needing nothing. It goes over the head and settles itself. The seam under the bust means it flows away from the middle instead of clinging anywhere, the V-neck sits exactly where it should and stays there, and the length is that graceful mid-calf that works with flat sandals. It is light, it breathes, and it does not crease into a state when you sit.

Getting dressed well now takes precisely as long as getting dressed badly used to. That is the entire trick of it.

What happened at lunch in Chester

I wore it to lunch in Chester with flat sandals and my good earrings, for no occasion whatsoever.

Four women asked me where it was from. Four. After thirty years of being the one who quietly asks other women, I was the one being asked, and I will admit I enjoyed every minute of it.

And Ann, who started all this, looked at me across the table and asked what the occasion was. There was no occasion. That was rather the point. It was a Tuesday, and I looked like the woman from the wedding photographs, and it had cost me no more effort than the shapeless things ever did.

It has been out four times since, and twice of those were for nothing more than the shops.

Three things I have learned since

One. Effort was never the price of looking nice. The right cut does the work for you. The seam under the bust and the flow of the skirt mean there is nothing to manage all day, and it looks considered from every angle.

Two. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8/10 all the way to a 22/24, the same graceful shape the whole way up, not a different dress once you pass a certain number. I wish more places would bother with that.

Three. One colour is never where it ends. They do it in five, and I have already ordered the ocean blue, because a dress you wear twice a week earns its keep twice as fast.

About the price

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

The Joan is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a dress that looks like this usually comes with a price tag that keeps it for occasions.

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 is the dress I grab when I want to look nice without thinking. On in seconds and comfortable all day, and people always comment." 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.

Get the photographs out. If the only pictures where you look properly yourself are the ones with confetti or a Christmas tree in them, then you have been saving your best self for occasions, the way I was, and nobody is handing out medals for it.

Not because a dress changes anything. It does not. But looking in the hallway mirror on an ordinary Tuesday and being pleased with what you see is a small daily pleasure I had filed under "not worth the effort", and it turns out the effort was never actually required.

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.

Put-together is my default setting now, and it took no effort at all.

Maggie