A letter from a reader

At 51, I counted what I had put on over a plain dress before leaving the house. It came to five things.

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 over a dress has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this one in the last month, two of them in the queue at the post office, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with my friend Bev, who had come to pick me up and was waiting in the hall while I did the last bit. She watched me put on a long necklace. Then a scarf, because the necklace was not quite enough. Then earrings. Then a bracelet, and then a little jacket over the whole lot. She did not say anything for a moment. Then she said it.

Maggie, that is five things you have put on to rescue one dress.

I laughed, and then I stood in the hall and looked at myself in the glass by the door, and she was right. Five. And the dress underneath all of it was perfectly fine. It was plain, and I had decided somewhere along the line that plain meant unfinished, and that unfinished was my job to fix on my way out of the house.

I did not decide that every plain thing I owned needed rescuing. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one necklace at a time, until a friend is counting them in your hallway.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why everything needed something over it, I understood what I had been buying.

A plain dress in a shop is sold as a canvas. That is the word they use. Style it up, dress it down, make it yours. What that means in practice is that they have sold you something unfinished and left the finishing to you, and the finishing costs money and takes ten minutes every single time.

A canvas or a costume. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a dress that was simply already done.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the plain one. You buy the necklace that goes with it. And you assume the ten minutes at the jewellery box is simply part of getting dressed.

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 not very good at accessorising. I bought magazines about it once. I have a drawer of things that were going to be the answer.

It turns out it was never about accessorising at all.

It is about whether the dress has anything of its own. One piece of detail built into the garment — a ruffle, in this case, and nothing else — and the dress arrives finished. There is no gap for a necklace to fill, because there is no gap. The drawer stops being relevant.

It took me until 51, and five things in a hallway, 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. Bev found them, which she reminds me of regularly and which she has earned.

The dress is called the Oriella. A soft, lightweight A-line with delicate ruffle detail, and that detail is the only thing on it. No print, no trim at the neck, no belt, nothing at the waist. It comes in one colour. I put it on with nothing and I have not added anything since.

The ruffle is the part that matters. It is built into the dress rather than hung off it, so the eye has somewhere to go and the dress reads as a decision rather than a blank. Because the shape is A-line and falls away from the body, it is not asking for a belt either, which is the other thing I used to add. And it is light, so there is nothing over it in the heat, which is where the jacket used to come in.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a dress that arrived finished.

What happened at the anniversary do

The first proper outing was a fortieth anniversary at a club in Scarborough, which is the sort of thing I would normally have added three items for.

Three women asked me about it before the cake. Bev’s cousin started it, because she said it looked expensive and I told her what it cost and she did not believe me.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She looked at me and asked who I was wearing, which is not a question anybody has ever asked me. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was my neck and my wrists. Nothing on them. Nothing to adjust, nothing to catch on a cardigan, nothing to take off because it had got heavy by nine o’clock. I had not realised how much of the evening I usually spend quietly rearranging things on myself until there was nothing there to rearrange.

The next morning I put it back on to go for coffee, with nothing over it and nothing at the neck. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Plain was never the problem. Unfinished was the problem. They are not the same thing, and the shops have been selling me the second one and calling it the first for about twenty years.

Two. Built-in beats added on, every time. A ruffle sewn into the dress does what five things hung off it were trying to do, and it does it at half past six in the morning without my help.

Three. Nothing on my neck is a better feeling than I expected. No weight, nothing shifting, nothing catching. I had got so used to it that I had stopped noticing it was there.

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 necklace I used to put on over the old one cost more than this dress.

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, and four things out of the accessories drawer have gone to the op shop, which Bev says is only the beginning.

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 a drawer of things bought to rescue clothes you already owned, and ten minutes of every morning goes on deciding which of them is needed today, 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 walking out of the house with nothing on your neck and nothing over your arm 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 Bev had to wait a week for hers.

I have not opened the necklace drawer since.

Maggie