A letter from a reader

At 58, my daughter pointed out that I have not chosen an outfit in years. I have been choosing shoes and building backwards.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman wears to lunch has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about these in the last fortnight, two of them at the same table, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Kate, who was helping me get ready for a lunch and watched me put a dress back on the hanger. She asked why. I said because of the walk from the car. She did not say anything for a moment, and then she said it.

Mum, you did not just pick shoes to go with that dress. You picked the dress to go with your shoes. You have been doing it all morning.

She was right, and worse than right. I went and thought about it properly afterwards and I could not remember the last time I had started with the dress.

Nobody decides to let their shoes choose their clothes. It happens one sensible morning at a time, until your daughter watches you do it and tells you.

How it happens

Once I looked at it properly, the mechanism was obvious, and I suspect it is not only me.

You own two kinds of shoe. There are the comfortable ones, which are trainers, and which announce themselves as sportswear the moment they appear under anything that is not trousers. And there are the ones that go with a dress, which you can wear for about ninety minutes.

So every morning you do a small sum. Where am I going, how far is the walk, how long will I be standing. And then you dress from the feet up, because the feet are the part that cannot be negotiated with.

Which means the nice things in the wardrobe only come out on the days the sum allows. And the sum almost never allows.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had wrong, and I had it wrong for a long time.

I thought I needed to toughen up, or find a better pair of the second kind. Something smart I could last a day in. I have bought those. They are always almost comfortable.

The answer was the other direction entirely.

A trainer does not have to look like sportswear. What makes a trainer read as a gym shoe is the chunk of it — a thick sole, a high collar at the ankle, bright panels, a visible brand. Take those away and leave the comfort underneath, and what is left is simply a flat shoe in a soft colour, which goes with a skirt as easily as it goes with jeans.

It took me until 58 to work out that I had been choosing between comfort and looking dressed, when the only real variable was how loud the shoe was.

The pair I bought

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My sister Carol found them and has mentioned it at every opportunity since.

They are a low cream trainer with a soft stripe down the side, a flat sole that does not sit up off the ground, and a plain lace-up front. No bright panels, no logo shouting across the side, nothing to tell the room you have come from somewhere athletic.

The colour is doing more work than I expected. Cream sits with almost everything — denim, navy, grey, a camel coat — without the hard full stop that a white trainer puts at the bottom of an outfit, and without the heaviness of black.

And the profile is the other half. Because the sole is flat rather than built up, the shoe does not add bulk at the ankle, so a skirt that stops mid-calf still reads as a skirt rather than as an outfit with gym shoes attached.

They are soft through the upper and light to pick up, which matters more than I would have guessed by about three in the afternoon.

What happened at the lunch

I wore the dress. That is the headline, really.

It was a long lunch with a walk at either end, which is exactly the kind of day that would normally have put me in trousers and the old navy pair without my even noticing the decision being made.

Two women asked where the shoes were from before the mains came out. The second one said, and I am quoting her, that she had been looking for something she could wear to this sort of thing without changing at the door.

What I noticed on the way home was not the compliments. It was that I had not done the sum. I had got dressed, looked at the shoes last, and gone.

Kate rang that evening and asked how it went. I told her I had started with the dress. She said good, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, which to her it is.

Three things I have learned since

One. It is not comfort versus smart. That is the false choice, and I was in it for years. The real variable is how loud the shoe is. A quiet trainer and a loud one are the same amount of comfortable.

Two. The sole height is what gives it away. A built-up sole adds bulk at the ankle and makes anything above it look like sportswear. Flat sits under a skirt and disappears. Look at the side profile before you look at anything else.

Three. Cream does what white cannot. A white trainer puts a hard full stop at the bottom of an outfit and a black one adds weight. A soft cream just ends quietly, which is what you want when the rest of you is dressed.

About the price

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

They are $69.95, down from $149.00. There is an Afterpay arrangement at four payments of $17.49 if that is easier than one go.

I have paid a good deal more than that for shoes I could wear for an afternoon, which is the comparison that actually mattered to me. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so nobody is taking a cut in the middle, and there is a sale on at the moment with free shipping Australia-wide.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the listing properly before I ordered. They come in six colours, and the sizes run from an AU 5 to an AU 11 with the European size printed beside each one. The listing says to go one size up if your feet are on the wider side, and I would follow that rather than guess.

There is a thirty day money-back guarantee, which is the only reason I was willing to order a shoe I had not had on my foot.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat here with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Think about the last three things you did not wear. Not the ones that do not fit. The ones that fit perfectly well and stayed on the hanger. Then ask yourself honestly whether it was the outfit you were turning down or the walk from the car.

For me it was the walk from the car every single time, and I had never once put it that way.

I am not going to pretend a pair of shoes changes anything. They do not. But getting dressed in the order you actually want to is a small daily pleasure I had quietly given up, and I would rather you did not give it up too.

Two practical things. The sale is on now with the free shipping. And order your usual size, because there is nothing clever going on with the fit.

I had not chosen an outfit in years. I had been choosing shoes and building backwards.

Maggie