A letter from a reader

At 67, I had decided I was far too old for dungarees

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 these at a garden lunch here in Cheshire on Saturday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Before I get to that, I should tell you what I had decided, because I suspect a good many of you have decided the same. Every time I passed a pair of dungarees in a shop window, I gave them the same little look and thought the same thing.

Dungarees are for young girls. I would look daft.

So I never tried a pair on. Not once in twenty years. I told myself they were for students and gardeners and women half my age, and I walked on by to the same dark trousers I always bought, and that was that.

I did not decide that on my own, mind you. That is the part I want to be clear about. It gets decided for you, quietly, over a great many years.

How it happens

I used to wear whatever I liked. In my thirties I had a pair of bright cotton trousers I wore until they went at the knee.

What changed was not me. It was the shops.

Somewhere along the way the high street decided that women over a certain age want to be invisible. Go and look. Rail after rail of the same loose, shapeless trousers and the same three dark colours, all of it described as easy or forgiving, which we all know by now is a polite way of saying nobody thought about you very hard.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the navy trousers because they are fine. You pull on the loose top because it does not cling. Nobody says anything, which is rather the point.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I think a lot of us have.

I thought the problem was dungarees themselves. That they belonged to the young, and that a woman of 67 in a pair would look as though she was trying to be something she was not.

It turns out that was never about my age.

What makes a pair look girlish is the cut and the print, nothing more. A skimpy fit, a childish pattern, a fabric that clings in all the wrong places. Change those three things and the whole thing reads completely differently. A relaxed cut with a wide, easy leg, straps you set to your own height, and a grown-up print, and it stops being a costume and becomes simply a nice thing to wear.

The same idea, cut so it skims instead of clinging, in a print chosen for a grown woman rather than a girl, reads as a decision. That is the whole difference, and it took me until 67 to work it out.

They are called the Posy

They are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

They are called the Posy. A pair of soft dungarees in a gentle sage green, with little wildflowers and the odd bee drawn all over them, so there is something cheerful to look at without it shouting. The cut is loose and the legs are wide, and the straps adjust to exactly where you want them.

They are light and they breathe, which in the last few weeks has mattered more than I expected. Nothing digs in and nothing clings, and there is a real ease to them. You step in, put the straps up, and you are dressed, one piece and done.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a pair of dungarees that somebody thought about.

What happened at the garden lunch

I wore them for the first time to a garden lunch here in Cheshire, with a plain white tee and my canvas shoes.

Four women asked me where they were from. Four. 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 said I looked like I had made an effort for once. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that I forgot about them. I did not spend the afternoon tugging at anything or wondering whether I looked silly. I sat down, I ate a very large piece of cake, and I did not think about what I had on once.

The next morning I put them straight back on to potter about the garden, and felt completely myself in them. That is the rarest sort of thing. The one you can wear to a lunch and then wear out to deadhead the roses, and feel right either way.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. They run from a small all the way to a 5XL, 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. You stop fussing. The straps set to your own height and the legs are wide, so there is no adjusting, no checking, no wondering whether anything is clinging. It is a small thing and it changes the whole day.

Three. They go both ways. A white tee and canvas shoes for a lunch, or exactly as they are for the garden. And when the evening turns, a light cardigan over the top finishes them off nicely.

About the price

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

The Posy is £37.95. It was £76.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any high street shop and pay more than that for a pair of trousers that will have gone shapeless 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 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, "I bought them thinking I was far too old for dungarees and I have not stopped wearing them since." That was the one that decided it for me.

Then I ordered a second pair.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent the last few summers in the same baggy trousers and the same loose top, not because you like them but because nothing else in the shops felt like you, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a pair of dungarees will change your life. It will not. But there is something in getting dressed in the morning and recognising yourself that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

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 wanted was nearly gone by the time I went back for a second pair. And once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

I have not felt too old for anything since.

Maggie