A letter from a reader

At 67, my whole top half had become navy tops I spent all day tugging down

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 put on.

But four different women asked me about my top at a coffee morning here in Cheshire a fortnight ago, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

The thing that started me thinking about it, though, came a few weeks earlier. My grandson had his birthday, and when the photographs came round on my phone afterwards I noticed I was doing the same thing in every single one.

In all of them, both my hands were pulling the front of my top down over my middle.

Not posing. Not holding a glass. Just quietly tugging. And once I had seen it I could not unsee it, because I realised I did it all day, every day, without ever deciding to.

The drawer I had been dressing from

If you had opened the drawer I reach for every morning, you would have found the same thing over and over. Navy tops. Charcoal tops. A black one for best. All of them a size larger than I actually am, because somewhere along the way I had decided that bigger meant it would cover more.

It did not cover more. It just sat there, and rode up when I sat down, and had to be pulled back into place every time I stood at the sink or got out of the car. A size too big does not hide the middle. It only gives you more fabric to fuss with.

I had been getting dressed like that for years, and telling myself it was sensible.

Then my sister-in-law came over in something completely different

Sheila called round for a cup of tea, and she had on this long, floaty blouse covered in little painted dots, every colour you can think of on a soft cream. I could not stop looking at it, and not at her middle, which is exactly the point I did not understand yet.

She told me it was called the Pauline, from a small British boutique called Manchester Boutique. And then she explained the bit that had been passing me by for a decade.

It is cut long. Properly long, so it falls well past the hips instead of ending at the widest part of you and asking to be tugged. The loose shape drapes softly over the middle and follows you when you move rather than clinging on. And the V at the neck does something I had not thought about at all, which is that it draws the eye up to your face, so that is what people look at first.

The colour was the last of it. After about ten years of navy and black, a print with a bit of joy in it felt like opening a window.

I ordered one that evening, in the cream multicolour, before I could talk myself back into the navy.

What happened at the coffee morning

I wore it for the first time to the coffee morning, over my black leggings, with the three-quarter sleeves I have come to like because they leave your hands free and cover the part of the arm most of us would rather not think about.

Four women asked me where it was from. One of them was Ann, who I have sat next to for years and who does not hand out compliments lightly. She said I looked bright, and well, and asked if I had been away somewhere. I had not. I had just put on a top that let me be looked at.

But the thing I keep coming back to is not what anyone said. It is that I sat through the whole morning and never once reached down to pull my top into place. It stayed where it was meant to be, so my hands stayed in my lap, and I actually listened to the conversation instead of managing my clothes.

The next day I put it straight back on over a pair of trousers to nip to the shops, and it was just as easy. It has quietly become the thing I reach for.

Three things I have learned since

One. Length is what covers you, not size. A top cut long enough to fall past the hips does the job that a top a size too big never managed. I have stopped buying bigger and started buying longer.

Two. A V-neck is quietly doing you a favour. It opens up the neck and lifts the eye upward, so people look at your face before anything else. I had spent years in high round necklines that did the opposite.

Three. Colour is not just for the young ones. A print with a bit of life in it did more for how I felt walking in than any dark top ever has. I was hiding, and I did not need to be.

About the price

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

The Pauline is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any high street shop and pay more than that for a top that has lost its shape by September.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, 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, "The first top in years I do not spend all day pulling down. It covers everything and I feel bright in it." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat at my kitchen table with a pot of tea, this is what I would say.

If your top half has quietly become a pile of dark tops that you spend the day pulling down over your middle, not because you like them but because they felt safe, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a blouse changes anything. It does not. But there is something in getting through a whole day without fussing at your clothes, and in being happy to be in the photograph, that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. Once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

I have not tugged a top down in weeks, and I had not realised how tired I was of doing it.

Maggie