A letter from a reader

At 54, the doorbell went and I did not answer it. My daughter was in the kitchen and watched me decide.

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 around her own house 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 at book club, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started on a Wednesday afternoon with Kate at the bench doing something on her laptop and me putting the washing out. The doorbell went. I came in, got as far as the hallway, saw the shape of somebody through the glass, and stopped. I stood there. I waited. Whoever it was put something on the step and went away. I came back into the kitchen and Kate had not moved, and she looked up and said it.

Mum. You just hid from the postman. Because of a top.

I laughed, because what else do you do, and then I looked down at what I had on, and she was right. A top I bought about six years ago for going out in. It has a mark on the front that did not come out. The neck has gone soft and it sits wrong now. It is the fourth or fifth thing in a row to have ended up in that drawer, and I wear something out of that drawer about five days out of seven.

I did not decide to spend most of my life in clothes I had already given up on. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one demotion at a time, until you are standing in your own hallway waiting for a man with a parcel to go away.

How it happens

When I actually thought about where the contents of that drawer had come from, I understood the system I had been running without ever agreeing to it.

Nobody sells you an everyday top. They sell you good tops. You wear the good top out, and then it gets a mark, or the shape goes, or it simply stops being quite good enough, and it does not get thrown away because there is nothing actually wrong with it. It gets demoted. And the bottom of that ladder is the drawer you dress out of five days a week.

Good tops, or last year’s good tops. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want to buy a nice top for the days when nothing is happening, which is most of them.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the good one for the occasion. You demote the last one. You get dressed out of the bottom of the pile every morning, and you assume that is simply what being at home looks like.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was that I needed to be tidier about it. Have a clear out, be ruthless, throw away the stained one. I have had that clear out about four times. Within six months there is a new bottom of the pile, because the system puts one there.

It turns out it was never about the clear out.

It is about buying something for the ordinary days on purpose. The moment a top is bought to be the Wednesday top rather than demoted into being it, the whole ladder stops. It does not need to be special. It needs to be chosen, and not stained, and the right shape, and that is a surprisingly low bar that I had somehow never once cleared.

It took me until 54, and hiding from a parcel, to work that out.

The collection is called Everyday Favourites

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Kate found them, which given that she witnessed the hallway she is entitled to bring up whenever she likes.

There are nineteen of them and they are all ordinary tops, which is exactly the point. Relaxed tees, a few knits, some blouses, a linen blend, a cotton henley, one jumper. Short sleeves, three-quarter sleeves, long sleeves. Nothing in there is an occasion. Mine is a relaxed knit and a half-sleeve tee, and I have worn one or the other most days since.

The shape at the neck is the part that matters more than it sounds. Every single top in that drawer went the same way — the neck softened, it started to sit wide and low, and that is the moment a good top stops being a good top. These sit where they are meant to. The cuts are relaxed rather than close, so they are genuinely comfortable for a day at home, and the colours are plain enough that nothing looks like it is trying. They are tops for a Wednesday that happen to be nice.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is buying for the days you actually have.

What happened on the Thursday

The first proper outing was no outing at all. It was a Thursday at home, which is the only honest test there is.

Three people saw me in it and I had not planned for any of them. The man came to read the meter and I opened the door. Then Bev called in on her way past and I let her in without saying anything about the state of me. Then Kate came round after work.

The third was Bev, who has been in and out of this house for thirty years and who has seen me in some things. She sat down, looked at me and asked whether I was going out. I was not going out. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than any of that, though, was the afternoon. I went to the shops at four because we needed milk, and I did not get changed first. I simply put my shoes on and went, which I had not realised had been a separate ten-minute job at the start of every unplanned errand for about six years until it was not.

The next morning I put the other one on and did exactly the same thing again. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. The clear out was never going to work. I have had four of them. The system puts a new thing at the bottom of the pile within six months, because something always has to be at the bottom. The only way out is to buy something for that job on purpose.

Two. It is the neck that goes first. Not the colour, not the fabric. Every top I have ever demoted went soft and wide at the neck, and that is the moment it stopped being wearable in front of anybody.

Three. Most days are ordinary days. I had been dressing properly for about forty days a year and dressing out of a drawer for the other three hundred and twenty-five. Written down like that it is not a close call.

About the price

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

They start at $32.95, and most of them are between fifty and seventy dollars. The one I would have expected to pay the most for, a silk-satin blouse, was $44.95 down from $109.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because the top I was hiding behind the front door in cost me more than any of them.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, which on this collection is around half off, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Nineteen of them, and unlike most of what I have bought from them the prices are not all the same, so you can take two ordinary ones and one that is slightly better than it needs to be, which is precisely what I did.

Then the drawer got emptied, properly this time, and four things went in the rag bag.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If you have a drawer of things that used to be good tops, and you get dressed out of it most mornings, and you have had the clear out more than once and it keeps refilling, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a t-shirt will change your life. It will not. But there is something in opening your own front door without thinking about it first 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 free shipping goes with it. And a couple of the colours are already showing as almost sold out, which I noticed because one of them was the one I wanted.

I have not stood in my own hallway waiting for somebody to go away since.

Maggie