A letter from a reader

At 42, my daughter asked to borrow my dress. I had to sit down for a second.

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 lends her daughter has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this dress in the last fortnight, two of them at the same birthday lunch, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Kate, who is twenty-three and home for the weekend and going out on the Saturday night. She came down the hall already half ready, stopped at my bedroom door, looked at what was hanging on the back of it and asked, in the most ordinary voice in the world, whether she could borrow it. I said borrow what. She pointed. And then she said it.

That one, Mum. Can I wear that one tonight?

I laughed, and then I sat down on the end of the bed, and I had to be honest with myself about why. It was not that I minded. It was that in twenty-three years she has never once asked. Not for a jumper, not for a coat, not for anything. Everything I own has been, to her, very clearly mine, in the way that things belonging to your mother are.

I did not set out to own a wardrobe that was obviously an older woman’s. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one safe purchase at a time, until your own daughter has never once wanted to borrow a single thing in it.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why nothing of mine had ever appealed to her, I understood what I had been buying.

The shops sort us. There is the section for women under thirty and there is the section for women over forty, and the second one is quieter, longer, plainer and sorted by how much of you it covers. You walk into it at some point without noticing, and after that everything you own comes from one half of a building.

Hers or mine. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a dress might simply be a good dress, and that a good dress works on a twenty-three year old and on her mother for the same reasons.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You shop in your section. You buy the sensible one. And you assume that is simply what having a daughter twenty years younger means.

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 to dress my age. I took that as a kindness to myself. It is the phrase I used whenever I put something back on a rack.

It turns out it was never about dressing my age.

It is about whether a dress is designed around a shape or around a year of birth. An A-line that falls away from you suits a woman at twenty-three and at forty-two for the same reason, because it is doing something about the line of a body rather than making a statement about how old that body is. Take the age out of the design and it stops belonging to anybody in particular.

It took me until 42, and a question in a doorway, 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. Kate found them, if we are being accurate about it, on her phone, and I have not been allowed to forget it.

The dress is called the Oriella. A soft, lightweight A-line with delicate ruffle detail, cut to fall away from you rather than down onto you. It comes in one colour only, which I will come back to, and that turned out to be a mercy.

The shape is the part that matters. An A-line is wider at the hem than at the shoulder, so it moves away from the body on its own and nothing is sitting on the middle. The ruffle detail gives it something to say without making it loud, which is the thing I always got wrong on my own. And it is light, so it moves when you move rather than holding a shape around you.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a dress that was designed around a shape and not an age.

What happened on the Saturday

She wore it on the Saturday. I want to be clear that I let her, and that I did not stand at the window.

Three women asked me about it the following week, after she had put a photograph up. Her friend’s mother started it, because she wanted to know which of us it belonged to.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She saw me in it at the lunch and asked whether it was Kate’s. I have decided, after some thought, to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I wore it the following weekend without thinking about whether I should. I did not do the thing where you put something on, look at yourself, and quietly decide you are too old for it, which I had not realised I had been doing in front of a mirror for about ten years until I stopped.

And she has asked again since. Completely myself, and apparently also completely her.

Three things I have learned since

One. "Dressing my age" was never a kindness. It was a rule I had made up and then obeyed for a decade, and the only thing it ever did was narrow what I let myself look at.

Two. A shape works or it does not. The year does not come into it. An A-line falls away from a twenty-three year old and from me for exactly the same reason. The reason is geometry, not birthdays.

Three. One ruffle is more than enough. Everything I used to buy had something on it — a print, a trim, a detail at the neck — because I thought plain meant dull. One ruffle on a plain dress is the whole answer.

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 that is not a discount, that is nearly a different price.

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, which I have not told her about, and which is going to live at the back of the wardrobe.

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 daughter has never once asked to borrow anything of yours, and you have quietly taken that as a fact of life rather than a fact about where you have been shopping, 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 putting something on without stopping to decide whether you are too old for it 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 Kate wanted me to order her one and I was too slow.

I have not put anything back on a rack and said I am too old for it since.

Maggie