The Bright Blouse I Was Told Was Too Much For My Age

A note from a reader about the small Australian boutique blouse that put colour back near her face, skimmed straight past her middle, and got her stopped at the flower market twice.

Somewhere around sixty I stopped wearing colour, and nobody told me to. I just did.

You know how it goes. Navy, grey, a bit of white, the safe things that go with everything and say nothing. I told myself it was elegant. The truth is I thought bright prints were for younger women, and every time I tried one on in a shop the mirror seemed to agree.

Three weeks ago a friend from my walking group turned up in a blouse from a small Australian boutique called Perth Boutique. It is called the Astra, and it is the brightest thing I have seen on a woman our age in years. She looked wonderful. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age you may have quietly packed the colour away too.

What it is

It is a relaxed blouse in a soft painterly print, cut long enough to fall past the middle. The waist is gathered rather than fitted, so there is a shape to it without anything pulling in, and there is embroidery worked into the fabric that you only notice up close. There are pockets, invisible ones, set into the seams. It comes in six colourways — a pink, an orange, a green, a white, and two mixed prints with several colours running through them.

But I want to be honest about the part that actually mattered to me.

It puts colour next to my face, and it does not cling anywhere.

That is the whole thing. The loose cut floats past my middle, the gathered waist gives me a line without gripping me, and the print does something I had forgotten a print could do. It makes me look awake. I put it on in the bedroom, turned to the mirror braced for the usual verdict, and the mirror had nothing to say.

The one I reach for most, in the mix. Stopped twice at the flower market before I got to the daffodils.

Navy said nothing for ten years. This says something, and it turns out I like what it says.

The flower market

The third time I wore it was the Saturday flower market with my daughter Kate, over from Melbourne for the weekend, and my granddaughter Poppy choosing daffodils.

A woman at the first stall, about my age, looked at the blouse and said, oh, that is lovely, where is it from. Two stalls later another one asked the same thing. Kate looked at me and said, Mum, you have been wearing navy since Dad’s sixtieth. What happened?

What happened is that a friend was right, and I had been wrong about colour for a decade.

“You look awake,” Kate said. “That is the only way I can put it. You look awake.”

→ Read about the Astra

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking to feel pretty. By a certain age you quietly lower that bar to comfortable, and then again to covered. What surprised me about the Astra is that it gave me all three and handed the colour back as well.

Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The cut does the work. Loose from the shoulder and long enough to fall past the middle. It skims. I stopped thinking about my stomach the moment it was on.

2. The waist is gathered, not fitted. That is the difference between a shape and a grip. There is a waist there when you look at me, and there is nothing pulling in when I sit down to eat.

3. The print is kind. Big, soft blooms keep the eye moving across the whole blouse instead of settling on any one part of me. I have learned, late, that a bright print can be more forgiving than navy.

It is light enough that I have worn it through a real Perth summer without wilting, and it has the kind of easy shape that lets me kneel in the garden, reach for the top shelf, and bend down for Banjo, our little rescue terrier cross, without anything pulling. It washes cold and goes on the line, which is all I ask of anything now.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Astra for $89.99 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what I have actually handed over for a printed blouse in the last few years, from my own bank statements, not from a shop window.

• Printed blouse, department store, 2023 — $149
• Printed blouse, a boutique in the shopping centre, 2024 — $120
• The Astra, three weeks ago — $89.99

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. …how??

What I’d tell you if we were friends

If we were on my back verandah with a cold drink and you asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that women our age have spent years being quietly taught that colour is for the young and navy is for us. The Astra is not loud. It is a soft, painterly print on a relaxed blouse that happens to be cut so it skims the part of you that you have stopped wanting to see, and it puts colour back where people look, next to your face.

I would tell you the mix is the one I reach for most, the orange is the one Kate says suits me best, and the green is the one I bought for the quiet days. I would tell you to buy two. If you buy two the stack discount comes off, and you will live in them anyway.

I would tell you that the pink and the white are already showing as almost sold out, and so is one of the two mixed prints. The end of season sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been reaching for the navy so nobody looks twice, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Maggie