A letter from a reader

At 50, I counted eleven camisoles in the top drawer. I had not bought a top without buying something to go under it since 2009.

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 has on underneath has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this top in the last month, two of them at the same netball game watching our granddaughters, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Bev, in my bedroom, helping me pack for three days up the coast. She opened the top drawer to get me a pair of socks and then just stood there for a second. Then she started taking them out and laying them on the bed. White, nude, black, white, black, navy, white. When she got to eleven she stopped and said it.

Eleven, Maggie. You have eleven of these and not one of them is a top. They are all so that something else can be a top.

I laughed, and then I looked at the row of them on the bed, and she was right. Eleven. And I had not noticed buying a single one, because you never buy a camisole on purpose. You buy a top, you hold it up in the changing room, you see the light through it, and you go and get something to put underneath. Every time. Since about 2009.

I did not set out to own eleven of something I have never once left the house in on its own. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one changing room at a time, until a friend is laying them out on your bed like evidence.

How it happens

When I actually worked out why every top needed an undershirt, I understood what had been going on.

Tops got thinner. Not cheaper necessarily, just thinner, because thin drapes nicely on a hanger and photographs well and costs less to make. And a thin top on a real body shows every single thing, so you buy the second thing, and the second thing is hot, and it rides up, and you spend the day pulling it down at the back.

See-through or two layers. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want one top that is simply a top.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the camisole. You wear both. You are warmer than you need to be from October to March, and you assume that is simply what getting dressed is.

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 better underwear. I bought longer camisoles, then seamless ones, then one that was supposed to stay put and did not.

It turns out it was never about what went underneath.

It is about whether the top needs anything underneath at all. Enough weight in the fabric that the light does not go through it, cut relaxed so it does not press against anything, and a plain round neck that sits where it sits and does not gape when you lean over. The moment that is true, there is no second layer, and the drawer can go.

It took me until 50, and eleven of them on a bed, to work that out.

The top is called the Marigold

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

The top is called the Marigold, and they call it a comfort coverage tee. It is a plain round-neck tee in a relaxed shape, with half sleeves that go a good deal further than usual, and it has enough to it that the light does not come through. Mine is the white, which is the one I would never have risked before. There are seven colours.

The fabric is the part that matters. It is light to wear and it is not thin, which are two different things that I had spent fifteen years treating as the same thing. Nothing shows through it, including in the white, which is the test. The shape is relaxed so it is not pressing against anything in the first place, and the neck is a plain round one that stays where it is when you bend over to pick something up. The hem is longer than a tee usually is and curves down at the sides, so it sits below the hip and there is nothing to pull down at the back. There is no second layer because there is nothing for a second layer to fix.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is one top, being a top.

What happened at the netball

The first proper outing was Saturday morning netball, in the white, in the sun, which is three separate things I would not have done a month ago.

Three women asked me about it before the second quarter. The one with the flask started it, because she wanted to know whether it was see-through and I said no and she said yes but is it really.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She asked where I had got a white top that worked. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was my back. I did not reach round once to pull anything down. Nothing rode up, because there was nothing there to ride up, which I had not realised I had been doing forty times a day for fifteen years until I stopped.

The next morning I put it straight back on for the markets, out of the wash, with nothing underneath it. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Light and thin are not the same thing. I had spent fifteen years treating them as one word. This is the lightest top I own and nothing goes through it, and both of those are true at once.

Two. One layer is cooler, and I should have worked that out sooner. Two layers in a Perth summer because the first one was not up to the job. Written down like that it is almost funny.

Three. The white one is the test. If a white top works, every other colour will. I ordered the white deliberately to try and catch them out, and it is now the one I reach for.

About the price

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

The Marigold is $45.95. It was $90.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid nearly that for a camisole whose only job was to make a different top wearable.

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. Seven colours — grey, white, blue, royal blue, pink, black and a yellow-green — and the sizes run from an AU 8/10 right up to an AU 18/20, all at the same price, which I notice, because for most of my life it has not been.

Then I ordered the grey and the pink, and eight of the eleven went in the bin, which Bev says is the most decisive thing she has seen me do.

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 your top drawer has a stack of things in it that you have never once worn on their own, bought one changing room at a time to rescue tops that could not manage by themselves, 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 getting through a Saturday without reaching round to pull something down 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 white that goes first, which I found out because Bev had to wait a week for hers.

I have not bought a camisole since.

Maggie