A letter from a reader

At 67, I wore the same navy dress to eleven years of family photographs

I have never written one of these before, and I nearly did not, because I can already hear what some of you are thinking. Ruffles. At sixty-seven. I thought exactly the same thing, and I will get to that.

It started the week of my granddaughter's christening. I had the navy dress laid out on the bed, the one I have worn to every wedding, christening and retirement do since 2015, and my daughter walked past the door, stopped, and said it.

Mum, please. Not the navy one again.

That evening I did something I do not recommend before bed, and went through the family photographs. Her wedding. Both christenings. My brother's seventieth. Eleven years of the biggest days of our lives, and there I am in every single one, in the same navy dress, stood slightly to the side.

Nobody chooses that. That is what I want to be clear about. It happens one ordeal at a time, because somewhere along the way, buying something for an occasion stopped being a pleasure and became a thing to be survived.

The trap on the dressy rails

Here is the choice the occasion rails offer a woman my age. You can have something that looks the part, which will be stiff, or clingy, or cut for a twenty-five-year-old, and you will spend the whole day breathing in. Or you can be comfortable, in which case you will not look dressed up at all.

Look done up, or enjoy the party. Pick one. Nobody says it out loud, but that is the deal, and the navy dress was simply the least-bad answer I had found to it. So I gave up looking for a better one.

Then a dress with ruffles changed my mind

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It is called the Catherine, and when I first saw the ruffles I nearly clicked away, because I had ruffles filed under mutton.

These are not those ruffles. It is a soft pink dress that falls in floaty layers, one over the next, down to the knee. The layers are the clever part, they float over your middle and your hips instead of clinging, so there is nothing to hold in and nothing to hide. The sleeves are loose and cover the tops of the arms without a cardigan. And the whole thing weighs about as much as a scarf.

What happened at the christening

I wore it to the christening with dressy flat sandals and my good earrings.

Four women asked me where it was from. One of them was Ann, who I have known since our children were at primary school and who has never once commented on anything I have worn. She asked twice, once at the church and again over the buffet.

But the part that mattered was quieter than that. I sat through the whole service, the photographs on the steps, and a two-hour buffet, and I never once breathed in, tugged anything down, or counted the minutes until I could get changed. I was dressed up, properly dressed up, and completely comfortable, at the same time, and I had honestly stopped believing that combination was on offer.

It has been out twice since, once for lunch in Chester and once for absolutely no reason at all, which the navy dress never once managed in eleven years.

Three things I have learned since

One. The layers do the work shapewear used to do. Because they float outward, there is nothing against your middle to worry about, and nothing underneath holding you together. That alone changes how a long afternoon feels.

Two. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8/10 to an 18/20, the same floaty shape the whole way up, not a different dress once you pass a certain number. I wish more places would bother with that.

Three. Pink was the right call, but there are four. They do it in navy as well, and I want it noted that I did not buy it. There is also a red and a khaki. Half the pleasure was choosing to be seen for once.

About the price

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

The Catherine is £36.95. It was £74.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because an occasion dress that fits properly usually starts at twice that.

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, "The layers skim over my middle and I did not have to wear anything underneath to hold me in. First occasion dress in years I actually enjoyed wearing." 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 cup of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and look at the photographs from the last few family dos. If you are wearing the same dress in most of them, and stood slightly to the side in all of them, then you have your own navy dress, whatever colour it happens to be, and you know exactly what I am talking about.

Not because a dress changes anything. It does not. But being at a family occasion, dressed up, comfortable, and glad to be in the photographs for once, is a small thing I had given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

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.

There is a new photograph on the mantelpiece now, and I am in pink, right in the middle of it.

Maggie