A letter from a reader

At 68, my sister asked what I was dressed up for. It was a Tuesday, and I was not dressed up for anything.

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 puts on of a morning has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this dress 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 with Carol, my sister, who let herself in on a Tuesday morning to drop off a casserole dish. I was at the sink. She stopped in the doorway with the dish in her hands, looked me up and down, and asked what I was dressed up for. I said nothing. She said no, really. I said really, nothing, and she stood there for a second and then she said it.

I have known you sixty-eight years, Maggie, and I have never once seen you in a dress on a day when nothing was happening.

I laughed, and then I dried my hands and thought about it, and she was right. I own six dresses. One for weddings, one for funerals, two for Christmas depending on the weather, and two that have not been out of the wardrobe since a cruise in 2019. Not one of them is for a Tuesday. There has never been a dress in my life that was simply for a day.

I did not decide that dresses were only for occasions. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one wardrobe at a time, until your own sister is startled to find you in one on a weekday.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for a dress I could wear for no reason at all, I understood why I did not own one.

The shops give you two choices. There is the occasion dress, which is lined and structured and wants a reason, and which you will wear four times in six years. And there is the sundress, which is cut for a twenty-five year old at a festival and finishes somewhere I stopped going in 1998.

An event or a costume. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a dress that is simply clothes.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You put the trousers on. You put the top on. You get through another Tuesday in two separate garments chosen in a hurry, and you assume dresses are something other people have days for.

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 had nowhere to wear a dress. I kept waiting for an occasion to justify one, and the occasions kept not coming, and the dresses kept sitting there.

It turns out it was never about having somewhere to go.

It is about whether the dress needs an occasion to make sense. Unlined, flowing, easy over the head, nothing to do up, in a colour that is not shouting. The moment a dress asks nothing of the day, you can wear it on a day that is asking nothing of you, and that is most days.

It took me until 68, and my sister in a doorway with a casserole dish, to work that out.

The dress is called the Gabrielle

It is from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Carol found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The dress is called the Gabrielle. A flowing midi in a soft, light fabric, with a round neck, little cap sleeves over the tops of the arms, and a seam that gathers under the bust so the whole thing falls away from you rather than down onto you. Mine is the navy. There are eleven colours and I would like to be honest and say I have looked at all of them.

The ease is the part that matters. It goes on over your head and there is nothing to fasten, so getting dressed is one movement and then it is done. The gathering under the bust means the skirt is not sitting on anything, and the midi length covers what I want covered without sweeping the kitchen floor. And it is light enough that I forget I have it on, which is the only way a thing becomes a Tuesday dress rather than a Saturday one.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a dress that does not want anything from you.

What happened at book club

The first proper outing was book club on the Thursday, which is a group of women who have seen me in the same four tops for a decade.

Three women asked me about it before anybody mentioned the book. Jen started it, because she said she thought I had somewhere to be afterwards.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She asked whether I had been away. I have not been anywhere. I have decided to take it as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was the morning. I did not stand in front of the wardrobe working out which top went with which trousers. I took one thing off a hanger and that was the end of it, which I had not realised had been costing me ten minutes and a small amount of goodwill every single day until it stopped.

The next morning I put it straight back on to go to the shops, because there was no reason not to. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. A dress that needs an occasion is not really a dress. It is a costume you own. Six of them, in my case, and between them they have had about eleven outings in six years.

Two. One garment is quicker than two, and I had never counted. Ten minutes every morning deciding what goes with what. Over a year that is the better part of three days spent in front of a wardrobe.

Three. Nobody thinks you are overdressed. That was the fear and it was nonsense. Four people have asked where I was going. Not one of them has looked at me oddly for being in a dress at the shops.

About the price

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

The Gabrielle is $57.95. It was $114.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because the last dress I bought was for a wedding, cost three times that, and has been worn once.

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 end of season sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Eleven colours, which is more than I have ever been offered in my life, and the sizes run from an AU 8 right up to an AU 24, all at the same price, which I notice, because for most of my life it has not been.

Then I ordered the khaki as well, which Carol says was inevitable and she is not wrong.

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 every dress you own is waiting for something to happen, and you have been getting through your actual life in two separate garments chosen at speed, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something in getting dressed in one movement on a day when nothing is happening 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 it is the navy and the white that go first, which I found out because Carol had to wait a week for hers.

I have not stood in front of the wardrobe on a Tuesday since.

Maggie