A letter from a reader

At 64, my granddaughter held her arms up to me at the park and I said not in this, darling.

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 can and cannot bend over in has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this dress since the school holidays, two of them at the same playground, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Poppy, who is five, at the park at the end of our street. She had got to the top of the climbing frame and decided she had had enough of it, and she turned round and put both arms up to me. And I heard myself say it before I had even thought about it. Not in this, darling. Wait for Grandad.

Not in this, darling. Wait for Grandad.

I laughed about it in the car and then I did not laugh about it at all. Because I had said it in a dress that cost eighty dollars, on a perfectly ordinary Saturday, to a five year old with her arms in the air. It was not a hard thing she was asking. It was the easiest thing in the world, and I had said no because of a skirt.

I did not decide that there were things I could not do in my clothes. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one garment at a time, until you are saying not in this to a child with her arms up.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why I could not pick her up, I understood how the dresses I owned were built.

A dress that holds its shape is a dress that is holding you. The nice ones are cut close through the hip and the thigh, because that is what looks right standing still in a shop, and standing still in a shop is the only thing they were ever designed for.

Smart or able to move. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want to crouch down in a dress and get back up again.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You wear the nice one and you stand still in it. You do the crouching in trousers on another day. And you assume that is simply what a dress is 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 was getting stiffer. I had quietly decided that crouching down and getting back up was going to be on its way out, and I had started arranging my life around that.

It turns out it was never about me.

It is about how much fabric there is below the waist. A skirt gathered from under the bust has room in it all the way down, so your knees can go where they like and the thing moves with you, and getting back up is just getting back up. The dress stops being something you are inside and becomes something you are wearing.

It took me until 64, and a child at the top of a climbing frame, 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. My friend Bev found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The dress is called the Gabrielle. A flowing midi in a soft, light fabric, with a seam that gathers under the bust so everything below it is loose, a round neck, and little cap sleeves. Mine is the military green. There are eleven colours, which at my age feels almost rude.

The room is the part that matters. Because the gathering starts high and the fabric falls from there, there is nothing close to the hip or the thigh, so crouching, kneeling, climbing into a back seat and getting down on the floor with a five year old are all simply things you do. It is a midi, so it covers you while you are doing them. And it is light, so none of that room turns into weight.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a dress with somewhere for your knees to go.

What happened at the park

The first proper outing was back to the same park, with the same five year old, on the next Saturday.

Three women asked me about it before we left. The one with the twins started it, because she had watched me get down on the grass and said she would like to know how.

The third was Bev, who had already seen it twice and said nothing for a week, and then said I seemed to be doing more lately. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I did not say it. Not at the climbing frame, not at the slide, not when she wanted to look at something in the grass. I got down and I got back up four or five times and none of it was a decision, which I had not realised I had been making every single time for about three years until I stopped.

The next morning I wore it to weed the front bed, which is the least glamorous thing I own a dress for. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. It was never me getting stiffer. I had started arranging my life around something that turned out to be a seam across the hips. I would like to have known that three years ago.

Two. The room is all below the ribs. It is not a sack. It is fitted where fitted is comfortable and loose everywhere you actually need to move, and those are two different places.

Three. Covered and free are not opposites. That was my assumption and it was wrong. Mid-calf, with that much skirt in it, means I can get down on the ground without a single thought about anything.

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 dress I said not in this darling in cost more than this one and could not do the one thing I needed.

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 brown as well for the winter, and Bev says we are going to turn up somewhere matching and neither of us will admit it was on purpose.

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 there is something small you have started saying no to, and you have quietly put it down to your age without ever once looking at what you had on, 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 down on the grass with a five year old and getting back up again 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 green and the navy that go first, which I found out because Bev had to wait a week for hers.

I have not said not in this, darling, since.

Maggie