The Dress I Wore To Two Weddings And A Tuesday

A note from a reader about the small Australian boutique dress that finally belonged in both piles, and went from a garden wedding to the markets without changing.

For about ten years I have owned two kinds of dress. The one for occasions, which I cannot wait to take off, and the one for every day, which I would never wear to an occasion.

You know the two. The occasion one needs a slip and a cardigan and a plan. The everyday one is comfortable and looks it. I told myself that was simply how dresses worked for a woman my shape. The truth is I had stopped believing there was a dress that did both.

Three weeks ago a friend of mine wore a dress from a small Australian boutique called Perth Boutique to a garden wedding, and then, two days later, to the markets. It is called the Sapphire. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age you may have the same two piles in your wardrobe.

What it is

It is a midi dress in one clear blue. Short sleeves. The length finishes somewhere below the knee, and the shape is cut to skim rather than to hold on to you. There is no print, no trim and no belt, which is the part I want to come back to.

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

I could not tell, looking at it, which pile it belonged in.

That is the whole thing. Every other dress I own announces itself before I have decided anything. The long ones are occasions. The short ones are Saturdays. The printed ones belong to a season. The Sapphire is one colour at one length, and one colour at one length refuses to say what it is for — which means it is for whatever you are doing.

The garden wedding, a fortnight ago. Speeches, dancing, and I forgot I was wearing it.

It belongs in both piles. I had stopped believing a dress could do that.

The two weddings

I wore it to my niece’s garden wedding first. My daughter Kate was over from Melbourne, and halfway through the speeches she leaned over and said, you have not tugged at that once. I looked down. She was right.

Three weeks later I wore it to a friend’s second wedding, a small one by the water, with sandals instead of heels, and two women asked where it was from before the cake.

And on the Tuesday in between I wore it to the markets with a straw bag and flat sandals, and it was just a nice dress for a Tuesday. Nobody looked at me as if I had overdressed for tomatoes.

“Two weddings and the markets,” Kate said. “Mum, that is the whole point of a dress.”

→ Read about the Sapphire

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 Sapphire is that it gave me all three without me choosing.

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

1. One colour travels, a print does not. A print belongs to a season and usually to a time of day. A single clear blue belongs to neither, so it goes from an afternoon to a dinner without appearing to have made an effort about it.

2. The midi is the length that will not commit. Short is daytime and long is an occasion. Below the knee is the one hem that refuses to tell anybody which, and that refusal is the entire use of it.

3. The shoes do the deciding. Flat sandals and a straw bag make it a Tuesday. Wedges and something at the ear make it a wedding. The dress stays out of it, which is what I now want from a dress.

It is light enough that I have worn it through a proper Perth scorcher without wilting, and it has the kind of easy skirt that lets me sit through a long lunch, get in and out of the car, and bend down for Banjo, our little rescue terrier cross, without the dress fighting me once.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Sapphire for $80.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what I have actually handed over for a midi like this in the last few years, from my own statements, not from a shop window.

• Occasion midi, department store, 2022 — $229
• Printed midi, a boutique in the shopping centre, 2024 — $159
• The Sapphire, three weeks ago — $80.95

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 keeping two piles of dresses, and that the Sapphire is the first one I have owned that belongs in both. One colour, one length, and nothing on it that decides the occasion for you. There is a difference, and you feel it the first time you wear the same dress twice in a week to two different things.

I would tell you it comes in the one blue, which is the point rather than a limitation, and that the sizes run from a small to a 2XL, which is a narrower range than I would like and worth checking before you order.

I would also tell you, because I would rather you heard it from me, that the listing does not say what the fabric is made of. It is light and it has not creased on me, which is what I can speak to. If the composition matters to you, ask them before you order.

It is $80.95, down from $174.00, with free shipping Australia-wide and thirty days to send it back, which is the only reason I was willing to order a blue I could not see properly on a screen.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been changing out of the nice dress the moment you got home, please do not wait.

— Maggie