A letter from a reader

At 67, I found the one dress I reach for every single morning without thinking

I have never written one of these before, and I should 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 stopped me about this dress in the village shop of all places last week, and I have explained it so many times since that writing it down properly felt easier than saying it again.

It started without me noticing. One morning a few weeks ago I went to get dressed and reached, without a single thought, for the same dress I had worn the day before, and the day before that. I stood there for a moment and realised I had not worn anything else in nearly a week.

Somewhere along the way it had quietly become the only thing I reach for.

And I did not mind one bit, which is the strange part. I have a wardrobe full of perfectly good things, and I walk straight past all of them for this one dress, every morning, without thinking about it at all.

Let me tell you why, because it took me a while to work it out myself.

Why I stopped reaching for anything else

It goes over my head and I am dressed. There is no zip to wrestle, no waistband deciding whether it approves of me that day, nothing to tuck or smooth or keep checking in the mirror. I put it on and I get on with the morning.

It is cut loose, so nothing pinches and nothing clings. But here is the part I had not expected. It does not hang off me like a sack either. It drapes. It follows me instead of swallowing me, so I look like I have thought about what I am wearing even on the mornings I plainly have not.

And it is comfortable in the way you forget clothes are allowed to be. Soft, easy, cool enough that I have worn it right through the warm spell without a second thought. I put it on for a five minute errand and I am still in it at teatime, because it simply never occurs to me to take it off.

The pockets I did not expect to love

I feel a little silly admitting how much this matters, but it has real pockets. Deep ones. The proper kind that hold my phone and my glasses and, if I am honest, the odd dog treat, without anything tipping out when I sit down.

I had not realised how much I had missed them. For years I have carried a little bag from room to room just to have somewhere to put my reading glasses. Now they go in a pocket and I forget about them. It is a small thing, and it has quietly changed the shape of my whole day.

The dress is called the Esra

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 Esra. A soft, easy dress with a gentle V-neck and relaxed sleeves, in a pretty mixed blue print, little polka dots and fine stripes and small checks all worked in together, so there is plenty to look at without any of it shouting. It is roomy through the body, comes down to a comfortable length, and has those deep pockets set into the sides.

It does not crease the moment you sit down in it, which anyone who has arrived somewhere looking like they slept in the car will appreciate. I have pulled it out of the wash, hung it up, and worn it the same afternoon looking perfectly presentable.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a dress that somebody clearly thought about.

What happened in the village shop

I wore it to do nothing more exciting than buy a loaf.

Three women stopped me between the bread and the till to ask where it was from. Three. And then Ann, who I have known since our children were at primary school, rang that evening to ask the same thing, because one of them had told her about it.

I have never had a conversation about my clothes while buying bread before.

What stayed with me, though, was not the asking. It was that I had stopped thinking about what I had on entirely. I was not tugging at anything, or wondering whether it had ridden up, or whether it suited me. I bought my loaf and I had a chat and it did not cross my mind once.

The next morning I reached for it again. Of course I did.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. It runs from a small right up to a 4XL, and it is the same easy cut the whole way up, not a different shape once you pass a certain number. I wish more places would bother with that.

Two. The pockets change how you carry a day. I no longer pick up a little bag just to move around the house. My glasses, my phone, the things I reach for a hundred times a day, they are simply on me. I did not know I had been missing it until I had it back.

Three. It goes both ways. Exactly as it is for the shops and the garden, or with a necklace and better shoes for a lunch, and nobody would guess it was the same dress I do the shopping in.

About the price

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

The Esra is £36.95. It was £74.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any high street shop and pay a good deal more for a dress that will have lost its shape 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 move the season's stock before it turns.

I did what I imagine you are doing now 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 has pockets, it is unbelievably comfortable, and I wear it more than everything else in my wardrobe put together." That was the one that decided it for me.

Then I ordered a second one, so I would not be caught out on wash day.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If you have been wanting one easy dress you can throw on in the morning and simply forget about all day, one that is comfortable without looking like you have given up, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something in getting dressed without it being a decision at all, and going a whole day without once thinking about what you have on, that I had rather forgotten was possible.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the size I went back for had already gone. And once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

I have not planned an outfit since it arrived. I just reach for the same one, and I am glad every single time.

Maggie