A letter from a reader

At 55, my husband asked me to dance at a wedding and I said no before he had finished the sentence.

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 at a wedding 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 table, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started at a wedding in the hills, at about nine in the evening, when they put on the song that was playing at our own. Don stood up and put his hand out and I said no before he had got the words out. Not a thought behind it. He sat back down, perfectly good-natured about it, and then after a moment he said it.

You used to be the last one off the floor, Maggie. When did that stop?

I laughed, and then I sat there for the rest of that song not able to answer him. I did not know when it stopped. There was no year. Nobody decided anything. And the worst of it was that I had been telling myself for about a decade that I had simply gone off dancing, the way you go off a food, and had never once gone looking for another explanation.

I did not decide to spend ten years sitting down at the good bit. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one event at a time, until somebody who has known you thirty-five years asks you a question you cannot answer.

How it happens

When I actually went and looked at what was hanging in the wardrobe, I understood what had been going on, and it had nothing to do with my feelings about dancing.

An occasion dress is built to be looked at while you are standing still. It is lined, often twice. It is structured through the body so it holds a shape without you. And a great many of them are narrow from the hip to the hem, because narrow photographs well. Every one of those three things is a reason not to move, and I owned four dresses that had all three.

Stand still and look lovely, or be comfortable at home. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want to be at a wedding for six hours and be in it for all six.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the lined one. You stand near the table. You sit down at nine. And you tell yourself you have gone off dancing.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought I had changed. I thought it was one of those things that quietly leaves you in your forties, like staying up for the end of a film.

It turns out I had not changed at all.

It is about whether the dress will let your leg move. A heavy lined skirt that is narrow at the knee physically cannot, and so you do not, and after a few years of not you decide it is you. Put the same woman in something unlined and light that is close through the body and then flares out below the knee, and the leg goes where it likes. I was not tired of dancing. I had been tied at the knees for ten years.

It took me until 55, and a song I have known since 1991, to work that out.

The dress is a rose pink chiffon

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 reminds me of regularly.

It is a rose pink chiffon with a watercolour floral print through it, a draped cowl at the neck, little cap sleeves over the tops of the arms, and a ruched bodice. And then from about the knee it opens out into a fishtail, which is the part this whole letter is about. It comes in the one colour, and there is a concealed zip at the back.

The flare is the part that matters. A fishtail is close through the hip and the thigh, which is why it looks the way it does standing still, and then it opens right out below the knee, which is where a leg actually needs the room. The chiffon does the other half — it is light, it is not a heavy lined skirt, and it moves a half second after you do rather than hanging there. The cowl at the neck and the little cap sleeves mean I am not thinking about my arms either, which I will admit was the other quiet reason I used to stay in my chair.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is narrow where it should be and open where your knees are.

What happened at the next one

The first proper outing was Carol’s husband’s sixtieth, in a function room with a proper floor, which is the fairest test I could have given it.

Three women asked me about it before the cake. The one who had been sitting out next to me at the last two of these started it, which I have thought about since.

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 where I had been hiding. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I did not do the calculation. There is a calculation you do at about nine o’clock where you work out whether getting up is worth what it is going to cost you, and I have been doing it at every single one of these for a decade. I did not do it. I just got up, which I had not realised had become a decision until it stopped being one.

Don did not say anything about it at the time. He mentioned it in the car. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. I never went off dancing. Ten years of a thing I believed about myself, and it was a lined skirt that was narrow at the knee. I would like some of those evenings back.

Two. The flare has to start below the knee. Not at the hip, which is a different dress entirely, and not at the ankle, which does nothing. Just under the knee is where a leg needs the room, and a fishtail is the only shape that gives it to you while still looking like that standing still.

Three. Unlined is doing more than you think. Weight is the other half of it. A light chiffon moves with you instead of being carried, and after four hours that is the difference between still being there and having gone home.

About the price

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

It is $89.95. The website has it down from $449.00, and I will be honest with you and say I do not know where that figure comes from and I did not pay very much attention to it. What I can tell you is what I handed over, which was eighty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents, and what I compared it with, which is the four hundred-odd I paid for a lined one in 2017 that I have danced in exactly none of.

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 a 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. It comes in the one colour, so there is no deciding to do there, and the sizes run from an AU 10 to an AU 18. It is a fitted bodice, so I would look at the size chart properly rather than guessing, which I say as somebody who guessed.

There is a thirty day money-back guarantee, which is the only reason I pressed the button on a fitted dress I had not had on.

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 there is something you used to do at a party and quietly stopped doing, and you have decided that is just what happens, then before you accept it have a look at what you were wearing the last few times you did not do it.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something in standing up when the song comes on without doing the sums first 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 read the size chart, because the bodice is fitted and that is not a dress to guess at.

I was not the first one off the floor. But I was not the first one sitting down either.

Maggie