A letter from a reader

At 69, I very nearly did not go to my own sister’s birthday, and it was not because I did not want to.

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 does with her evenings has never been any of my business.

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

It started at twenty past five on a Friday, sitting on the end of my bed in my dressing gown, with the table booked for seven. I had been in that room since half past four. There were three things on the bed. And I heard myself think, quite clearly and quite calmly, that I could ring Carol and say I was not feeling well and she would understand.

I was going to miss my own sister’s birthday because I could not face the next ninety minutes.

I went, in the end. I went in the navy thing I always go in. But I sat in the car outside the restaurant for a minute first, and I thought about how many times I had done the maths on an evening out and decided the getting ready was more than the going. Not the driving. Not the company. The ninety minutes in a bedroom beforehand.

I did not decide to start weighing up whether an evening was worth the effort. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one long hour in a bedroom at a time, until you are sitting on the end of a bed working out how to get out of your sister’s birthday.

How it happens

When I actually worked out where the ninety minutes went, I understood what the problem was.

It was never the hair or the face. It was the decisions. This top with those trousers, and then the question of what goes over it, and then whether the shoes work with that, and then starting again because the answer to one of them was no. Every single thing I owned needed two other things to agree with it.

Separates or nothing. That was the whole wardrobe. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want one garment that settles the entire question by being put on.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You lay three things on the bed. You try two of them. And you assume the ninety minutes is simply the price of going out.

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 nothing to wear. I would say it out loud, standing in front of a full wardrobe, and then I would go and buy another top that needed trousers.

It turns out it was never about having nothing to wear.

It is about how many decisions are between you and the front door. A dress that is one garment, that goes on over your head, that needs nothing over it and nothing deciding about underneath it, takes the whole question and answers it in one movement. Ninety minutes becomes fifteen, and fifteen minutes is nothing at all to pay for an evening with your sister.

It took me until 69, and very nearly missing a birthday, to work that out.

The dress is called the Oriella

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 given the circumstances she is entitled to remind me of as often as she likes.

The dress is called the Oriella. A soft, lightweight A-line with a delicate ruffle detail, which falls away from you instead of down onto you. It comes in one colour only. That fact is doing more work in this letter than you might think.

The simplicity is the part that matters. It is one garment, so there is nothing to match it to. It goes on over the head, so there is nothing to fasten in a hurry. The ruffle means it already looks finished, so I am not standing at the jewellery box at ten to seven wondering whether it needs something. And because it comes in one colour there is not even a decision there. From dressing gown to front door, there is now exactly one choice to make, and I have already made it.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is an evening with the ninety minutes taken out.

What happened at the next one

The first proper outing was dinner for Carol’s husband, six weeks after the birthday I almost missed.

Three women asked me about it before the mains. The one on my left started it, because she said I had arrived looking unflustered and she wanted to know the trick.

The third was Carol, who knows exactly what happened on her birthday because I told her in the car on the way home, and who said only that I had turned up early for once. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was five o’clock. I was not in the bedroom. I was in the kitchen with the radio on, with nothing laid out on the bed and nothing to decide, and I went up at twenty to and came down at ten to, which I had not realised had been impossible for about fifteen years until it was not.

And I have said yes to two things since that I would have found a reason not to go to. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. It was never the hair and it was never the face. It was the decisions. Three garments that all had to agree with each other, and me standing between them with the clock going.

Two. One garment is one decision. Over the head, done. Nothing matched to it, nothing over it, nothing added at the neck. That is the whole ninety minutes, gone.

Three. I was not tired of going out. That is the part that upset me when I worked it out. I had been telling myself I could not be bothered any more, and it was never that at all.

About the price

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

The Oriella is $89.99. It was $299.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch at seventy per cent off, because the last dress I bought for an evening was three times that and is the reason I nearly stayed home.

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, which on this one is seventy per cent off, with free shipping Australia wide.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. It comes in the one colour, which saved me a decision I would otherwise have spent a week on, and the sizes run from an XS to a 2XL at the same price.

Then I ordered a second one, so there is one in the wash and one on the door, which Carol says is the behaviour of a woman who has given up entirely. She is wrong. I have simply stopped deciding.

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 ever sat on the end of a bed in a dressing gown and worked out whether you could get away with not going, and told yourself it was because you were tired, 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 going up at twenty to seven and coming down at ten to 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 middle sizes that go first, which I found out because Carol had to wait a week for hers.

I have not sat on the end of the bed working out how to get out of something since.

Maggie