A letter from a reader

At 67, I have found a loophole, a dress that is secretly a jumper

This is not the sort of thing I do. I do not review things, I do not post things, and I have certainly never sat down to write about what I wear. But I have now told this story so many times that writing it down once seemed the sensible option.

It started at my son’s Sunday lunch a little while ago. His new wife Fiona, who I am still trying to impress and who I suspect is still trying to impress me, looked at me over the roast potatoes and asked a question I have been thinking about ever since.

How are you the only one at this table who looks dressed up and comfortable at the same time?

I ended up explaining my dress to the whole table like a saleswoman, which is not like me at all. And it has not stopped since, so here we are.

Because the honest answer is that I was not comfortable in spite of being dressed up. I was comfortable because I was cheating.

How it happens

Somewhere along the way, we all sorted our clothes into two piles. The smart pile and the comfortable pile.

The smart pile is dresses. Lovely to look at, and a performance to wear. Something underneath, a cardigan on top because the fabric is thin, a waistband that starts arguing with you halfway through the main course.

The comfortable pile is the jumper and trousers. And that is what autumn becomes, if you are not careful. The same jumper over the same trousers, every single day, from the first cold morning until spring.

I had decided that was simply the choice. Smart or comfortable, pick one.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong. I thought a dress had to be flimsy to be a dress.

Then I found one that is built like a jumper instead. The same soft marled look as a favourite jumper, a ribbed collar, proper deep ribbed cuffs, a thick ribbed hem. But cut as a dress, falling to the knee, skimming rather than clinging.

Which means it does everything the jumper does, warmth, softness, no fuss, while looking like you have made a proper effort. That is the loophole. Nobody looks at a dress and thinks you have taken the easy way out. But you have.

Mine is the orange

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now.

It is called the Rosamundina, and mine is the burnt orange, which I nearly did not choose because I thought orange was for other people. It is the exact colour of the leaves outside at the moment and I have had more comments on it than on anything I have worn in years.

The details are what make it. The ribbed collar opens with three little pewter buttons, so you can wear it closed against the wind or open with the collar sitting loose. The cuffs and the hem are properly ribbed, the way good jumpers used to be. And it is relaxed through the body, so it skims over the bits I have stopped negotiating with.

One piece, dark tights, boots. That is the whole outfit. Done before the kettle has boiled.

What happened at Sunday lunch

That first Sunday, I wore it with tights and my flat brown boots and thought no more about it. Then came Fiona’s question, and my son chiming in that I looked very smart, which from him is practically a speech.

And the part nobody at the table knew is that I was, for all purposes, sitting there in a jumper. Through three courses. Not one moment of tugging at a waistband or wishing I had worn something else.

Three things I have learned since

One. One piece is faster than any outfit. There is no combination to get wrong. The dress is the decision, and it is made before you are properly awake.

Two. The collar does the work. Buttons closed, it is neat and warm. Top button open, it looks considered, like you thought about it. I did not think about it.

Three. It goes almost everywhere. Lunch, church, the shops, coffee with my daughter. Same dress, different boots. Nobody has caught on yet.

About the price

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

The Rosamundina is £36.95 at the moment. It was £74.00.

My first thought was that it was a lot for one dress, until I counted what I was actually replacing. A dress, plus the jumper you would wear over a thin dress anyway. This is both of those in one, and I have worn it more in a few weeks than anything else in the wardrobe.

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 first thing I reach for when I want to look like I tried without actually trying.” That was the one that decided it for me.

They do it in five colours, and I am already eyeing the beige.

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.

Have a look at what you reach for on a cold morning. If it is the same jumper and the same trousers, again, it is not because you have stopped caring. It is because nobody offered you the loophole.

Two practical things. There is a sale on now, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the popular colours and the middle sizes disappear first. It comes in sizes 8 to 20.

It looks like a dress. It feels like a jumper. Nobody needs to know which one you were dressing for.

Maggie