A letter from a reader

At 49, I owned eleven plain tops and told myself I had a classic wardrobe. My daughter had a different word for it.

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 is in another woman’s drawer has never been any of my business.

But three women asked me about this top in the one week, two of them at the school gate, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started when Kate was folding washing with me and lined up what had come off the line. Eleven plain tops. Navy, black, white, grey, a stone, another navy. She laid them out like evidence, which is more or less what they were.

Mum, this is not a classic wardrobe. This is the same top eleven times and you have been calling it a capsule.

I had been calling it a capsule. For years. I had read the word somewhere and applied it to what was really just a long run of identical safe decisions.

Nobody sets out to buy the same top eleven times. You buy a plain one because the printed one felt like a risk, and then you do that again, and again, and nobody ever lines them up on the bed and shows you.

How it happens

Once I looked at it properly, I could see exactly how I had got here, and I do not think it is only me.

Shops give you two piles. There are the plain tops, which are safe and which you can wear on a Tuesday without thinking about it. And there are the ones with something going on — a print, a slogan, a bold stripe, a pattern that belongs to a season.

The second pile is a risk. A print can date, it can be too young, it can be a thing you were wearing in all the photographs of one particular year. So you buy from the first pile. And it works, which is the trouble, because nothing ever goes wrong enough to make you stop.

Eleven times it worked. And then my daughter laid them out on a bed.

What I had wrong

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

I thought the choice was plain or patterned. Safe or interesting. One or the other.

There is a third thing, and it is texture.

A waffle knit has structure in the fabric itself — small raised squares that catch the light and give the eye something to look at — without a single printed thing on it. So it reads as considered rather than plain, and because there is no pattern, there is nothing to date, nothing that belongs to a season, nothing that will look like a particular year in a photograph.

All the interest, none of the risk. It took me until 49 and eleven identical tops to work that out.

The top is called the Maddison

It is 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, which she brings up regularly.

It is a relaxed polo in a soft butter yellow, knitted in a waffle texture all the way through. Short sleeves cut loose through the arm, a classic polo collar, a short buttoned placket at the front, and a hem that curves gently down at the sides rather than cutting straight across.

The collar is the second thing it has that a plain tee does not. A collar sits up at the neck and gives a shoulder line something to finish against, which is why the same woman in a collar looks dressed and in a round neck looks comfortable. It is a very small amount of structure doing a disproportionate amount of work.

The curved hem is the third. Because it drops a little at the sides, it sits over the top of a waistband instead of stopping dead across the widest part of you, which means it works untucked without looking like it has been left untucked.

And the yellow is a soft one — closer to butter than to lemon — which is why it behaves itself next to denim, navy and white rather than shouting over them.

What happened at the school gate

The first week I wore it three times, which tells you something on its own.

Two women asked about it at the school gate on separate mornings. The second said she had been looking for something that was not a tee shirt but was not a blouse either, which is as good a description of the gap as I could manage.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I have worn. She asked if it was new, which from Lorraine is a long and enthusiastic review.

What I noticed more than the asking was that I had reached for it without the small weighing-up I normally do. There was no question of whether it was too much for a Tuesday, because it is not too much for anything.

That is the thing about texture rather than print. It does not have an occasion attached to it.

Three things I have learned since

One. Plain is a decision too. Eleven safe choices is not a classic wardrobe. It is the same choice eleven times, and nothing ever goes wrong enough to make you notice. Lay them out on a bed if you want the truth of it.

Two. Texture is the third option. A waffle knit gives the eye something to look at with no print on it at all, so there is nothing to date and nothing that belongs to one season. Interest without the risk that made you buy plain in the first place.

Three. A collar does more than it should. It gives the shoulder line something to finish against, which is the difference between looking comfortable and looking dressed. Same woman, same trousers, small piece of structure at the neck.

About the price

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

It is $74.95, down from $149.00. There is an Afterpay arrangement at four payments of $18.74 if that is easier than one go.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for the plain ones. There is no catch 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. The sizes run from a small all the way to a 5XL, which is a wider run than most things I look at, and there are nine colours. Mine is the butter yellow. Take your usual size, because the cut is relaxed rather than oversized.

There is a thirty day money-back guarantee, which is the only reason I was willing to order a colour I had not worn in years.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

Take everything plain out of the drawer and lay it on the bed. All of it, at once, the way Kate made me. Then decide whether that is a wardrobe or a habit.

Mine was a habit. Eleven times over, and I had a nice word for it.

I am not going to tell you a top changes anything. It does not. But reaching for something without doing the small sum about whether it is too much for a Tuesday is a pleasure I had quietly traded away, and I would rather you did not trade it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment with the free shipping. And take your usual size, because the cut is relaxed and there is nothing clever going on with it.

This is not a capsule wardrobe. This is the same top eleven times.

Maggie