A letter from a reader

At 64, I had worn a cardigan to every summer lunch for forty years. It was never because I was cold

The only thing I have written this month is the list I left for the lady minding Banjo while we were over in Perth, and it ran to two pages, both sides. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about a dress on a day trip last Saturday, and I have told the story so many times since that Graham says I should write it down and give everybody a copy.

It starts at a Christmas barbecue last year, at my daughter's. It was thirty-four degrees in the shade, the men were standing round the barbecue in shorts, and I was sitting in a nice summer dress with a cardigan over the top of it. Graham came over with a sausage in bread, looked at me, and said it in front of everybody.

Di, it is thirty-four degrees and you are wearing a cardigan.

I told him I was fine. I was not fine. I was cooking. But the cardigan was not for the weather, and every woman at that barbecue over fifty knew exactly what it was for. It was for my arms.

I did not decide to spend forty summers in a cardigan. Nobody does. It just happens, one photograph at a time.

How it happens

Somewhere in your fifties you see yourself in a photo from a wedding, in something sleeveless, and you notice your upper arms before you notice anything else. So the next time, you put a little cardigan over the top. Just for the photos.

Then the cardigan becomes the outfit. And the trouble is that nearly every pretty summer dress in the shops is sleeveless, or strappy, or made for a girl of twenty-five. The ones with sleeves are long, heavy and look like they belong in a church hall in July.

So there is the choice we are left with every December. Cool, or covered. I had picked covered so many times that I had stopped noticing I was the only one at the table fanning herself with a paper plate.

Then Helen got off the train in sleeves

What changed my mind was Helen, my oldest friend, who came down from Woy Woy in September for my birthday matinee. It was one of those early hot days, twenty-nine by lunchtime, and she stepped off the train at Epping in a blue and white dress with loose sleeves to the elbow, no cardigan, no shawl, nothing over the top, and she looked cooler than I did in a sleeveless top and a wrap.

I asked her where it was from before we were out of the station. She told me a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. I ordered mine that evening, while Graham was watching the cricket.

The one I chose is called the Maisie. It is white, with a big classic blue pattern on it, the sort of scrolls and flourishes you see on good old china. The first thing I said when I took it out of the bag was that it looked like Mum's dinner set, and I meant it as a compliment.

It has a V-neck edged with a little band of open cut-out trim, and the same trim runs across the raised waist and round each sleeve. The sleeves are loose and come down to the elbow, so they cover the part of the arm I was hiding without clinging to it. The skirt is softly gathered and falls to the middle of the calf, and the whole thing is loose and easy, so nothing sits tight anywhere on a hot day.

What happened on the island

Raelene, who worked beside me on the front desk for twelve years before she moved to Fremantle, turned seventy this month, and her daughter organised a day trip to Rottnest Island for the occasion. So Graham and I flew over to Perth for the week. We caught the ferry over from Fremantle on the Saturday morning, the young ones hired bikes, and the rest of us took the island bus round the bays.

It was thirty-one degrees by eleven o'clock. I wore the Maisie with flat tan sandals and a straw hat, and I left the cardigan folded in the suitcase at the apartment on purpose. Graham noticed. He did not say anything, which for Graham is a speech.

Three women asked me about the dress that day. The first was a woman in the queue at the bakery, who wanted to know if it was hot to wear. It was not. The second was a young girl on the island bus, who said it looked like her grandmother's teacups, and then said that was a good thing. The third was Nola.

Nola is Raelene's older sister. She came into our practice every Tuesday for twenty years before she moved west, and in all that time I never once heard her say a kind word about anybody's clothes, including the doctor's. She looked me up and down outside the general store and said, Well, Dianne. I did not know you had arms. Then she asked for the name of the shop.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. I sat on a bench in the sun eating a sausage roll with my hat on, I climbed up and down off that bus a dozen times, and I did not once pull at a sleeve or reach for something to put over the top. When Raelene's daughter put the photos on the family chat that night, I was in nearly all of them, and I looked at every one.

When we got home I wore it again to Sunday lunch at the club with Graham, and to pick up the grandkids on the Thursday. Jenny from over the road asked if I had been somewhere nice. I said only the school gate.

Three things I have learned since

One. Sleeves do not have to mean old-fashioned. It was never the sleeves that put me off. It was the heavy, buttoned-up ones that look like a school uniform. A loose sleeve to the elbow on a summer dress is a different thing entirely.

Two. You can be cool and covered on the same day. I had believed for forty summers that it was one or the other. It is not. I spent a whole day in the West Australian sun and never once wished for the cardigan, or wished I had left it off.

Three. Blue and white goes with everything you already own. Tan sandals, white sandals, a straw hat, a navy bag, the little silver earrings I have had since I was forty. I have not had to buy one other thing to go with it.

About the price

I will be honest, the price is what made me suspicious.

The Maisie is $78.95. It was $158.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid that much for a summer dress before and then spent the whole season with a cardigan over it.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they run a spring sale to move the season's stock. I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you are doing now. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if anything made me trust it more. One woman from Busselton had written, “First summer dress in years I have not had to wear a shrug over. I wore it to my grandson's christening in thirty-three degrees and was the coolest woman in the church.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Nola, I am told by Raelene, ordered hers on the ferry back.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the back verandah with a cold drink and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have a Christmas lunch or a summer wedding or a day out coming up, and you already know which cardigan is going over the top because it is the one that always goes over the top, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something about walking out into a hot day with nothing over your arms and not giving them a second thought that I had quietly given up on. I would not want you to give up on it too.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and the middle sizes go first. And with summer and the Christmas lunches about to start, I would not leave it too long.

Forty summers in a cardigan. I left it in the suitcase on Rottnest, and nobody missed it, least of all me.

Dianne