A letter from a reader

At 62, my daughter scrolled back through four years of family photographs. I am in the same dress in every single one.

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 wears to 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 function, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Kate, my daughter, on the sofa, going back through her photographs to find one of the dog. She went past a christening. Then a sixtieth. Then a wedding in the hills. Then her cousin’s engagement. She stopped scrolling, turned the phone round to face me, and let me look at four years of my own family in about nine seconds. And then she said it.

Mum. It is the same dress. It is the same dress in all of them.

I laughed, and then I took the phone off her and went through them myself, slowly, and she was right. The navy, with the little sleeves. Four years. Six occasions that I could find and probably a few more that nobody photographed. The same dress at my grandson’s christening and at his mother’s cousin’s wedding, and the same handbag with it, and in two of them the same shoes.

I did not decide to attend every family occasion of my sixties in one dress. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one event at a time, until your daughter has it laid out in front of you in a camera roll and there is nowhere to put your eyes.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why there was only ever one, I understood exactly how it had happened.

A good dress is expensive, so you buy one. And because you have only got one, it has to work everywhere, so you buy the one that will do for a funeral and a christening and a wedding, and the dress that will do for all three is the navy one with the little sleeves. It is the right choice every single time you make it. The trouble is you only ever make it once.

One dress that does everything, or four dresses you cannot afford. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might go to five things a year and not want to be photographed in the same garment at all of them.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You wear the navy. You get the compliment on it that you got last time, from somebody who has forgotten they gave it. And you assume that is simply what having one good dress 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 a better dress. Every time this nagged at me I thought about replacing the navy with something nicer, and then I looked at what nicer costs and I put it off for another year.

It turns out it was never about how good the dress was.

It is about how many of them there are. One dress at any price is still one dress, and one dress means the same photograph six times. Three dresses that are nothing like each other mean nobody ever sees the same one twice, and that is not a question of quality at all. It is a question of whether a good dress costs so much that you are only ever allowed one.

It took me until 62, and nine seconds of a camera roll, to work that out.

The collection is called the Favourite Dresses

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Kate found them, which given the circumstances she is entitled to mention as often as she likes.

There are thirteen pieces in it and they are properly dressed-up things, not day dresses with a bit of pattern on. Chiffon, lace panels, a fishtail, a cowl neck, a one-shoulder, a couple of midis and a lot of maxis. There is a jumpsuit in there as well, which I have my eye on and have not yet been brave about. They are all the same price.

The variety is the part that matters, which is not a sentence I expected to write about a collection of thirteen. They are not thirteen versions of one dress. A floor-length chiffon with a cowl neck and a lace-trimmed midi are not going to be mistaken for each other in anybody’s photographs, and that is the entire point of the exercise. I took the dark one with the lace first, and the long printed one a fortnight later, and they have nothing whatever in common.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is three dresses instead of one.

What happened at the next one

The first proper outing was a seventieth at a golf club, which is exactly the sort of occasion the navy used to get.

Three women asked me about it before the speeches. Kate’s godmother started it, which I enjoyed, because she is the one who gave me the compliment on the navy twice.

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 whether there was a reason I had made an effort. There was no reason. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was afterwards. Kate put four photographs up and I looked at them without doing the thing where you check whether this is the same dress as the last lot, which I had not realised I had been doing every time anybody posted anything for about four years until I stopped.

And there is a wedding in March that I am not worrying about, because the long printed one is already hanging up for it. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. One good dress is still one dress. It does not matter how good it is. Five occasions a year and one garment means the same photograph five times, and no amount of quality fixes that.

Two. The navy was never wrong. It was just alone. I want to be fair to it. It did everything I asked of it for four years. What it could not do was be a different dress, and that was the only thing I actually needed.

Three. They have to be nothing like each other. Two dresses in the same colour and the same length is still one dress as far as a camera roll is concerned. A long chiffon and a lace midi is two.

About the price

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

They are $89.95. They were $224.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because the navy cost me the better part of four hundred dollars in 2021 and I have the receipt somewhere to prove it.

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 spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more — which, given that the whole argument of this letter is to own more than one, I did take advantage of.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Thirteen of them, every one the same price, which means you are choosing on which occasion it is for and not on what you can justify spending twice in a year.

Then I ordered the long printed one as well, and I am still thinking about the jumpsuit.

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 one good dress in your wardrobe that has been to everything since about 2021, and you have a small sinking feeling every time an invitation arrives, 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 looking at the photographs afterwards without checking which one you had on 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 there are only thirteen of them, which is the whole of the collection, so it is not a rack you can come back to in a month and expect to find the same things on.

Nobody has seen me in the same dress twice since.

Maggie