A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent twenty years of holidays dressed for the car

Graham will tell you I have written exactly one thing in my life for other people to read, and it was a strongly worded note to the council about the footpath. So I am not a writer, and in sixty-four years it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about my jumpsuit at the Saturday growers market at Berry, one of them over a punnet of strawberries before she had even given me my change, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

It started on the Thursday night before Graham and I drove down the coast for the long weekend. Our daughter popped in to drop back a casserole dish and found me on the bedroom floor with the bag open, three outfits laid out for two nights, and on top of the lot the navy pull-on pants and long grey top I was actually going to wear in the car. She looked at the pile for a moment and said it.

Mum, you always get dressed for the car. Never for where you are going.

I laughed, and then I thought about every holiday photograph from the last twenty years, and she was right. There I am at the Three Sisters, on the ferry with the grandkids, on a jetty somewhere with an ice cream, in the same sensible travel clothes, looking like I had come to read the meter. The nice things stayed folded in the bag, because by the time we arrived anywhere it never seemed worth the bother of changing.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to spend her holidays looking like she is on her way to a medical appointment. It happens quietly, one sensible packing decision at a time, until your own daughter says it out loud across the bedroom floor.

How it happens

When I was younger I dressed for the place. The beach had its own clothes, the city had its own clothes, and it never occurred to me to think about the drive.

What changed was not me. It was the choice the shops leave us with.

Go and look. On one rack there is what they call travel wear, all elastic and beige and zip-off legs, comfortable in the way a waiting room chair is comfortable. On the other rack there are the nice things, which need a top that matches, a belt that behaves and somebody to tell you nothing has ridden up.

So you pick comfortable, because three hours on the highway is three hours on the highway. And then you get out of the car at the coast and you look like the car.

What I had wrong

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

I thought the answer was packing more. Three outfits for two nights, just in case. And every single time I wore the travel pants anyway, because changing felt like a production.

It turns out the answer was fewer pieces, not more. One piece, in fact.

A relaxed one-piece does both jobs at once. There is nothing to match and nothing to tuck, it goes on in seconds over a plain white tee, and it is the same outfit in the car as it is at the market. The decision I had been making three times a weekend just stopped being a decision.

The one I bought first is the wildflower one

It is from Thompson Sydney, a little Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

It is listed, rather plainly, as the Comfortable Printed Jumpsuit, which undersells it. It is a soft heathered grey, with straps over your tee and a relaxed cut through the legs, scattered all over with tiny wildflowers: cream daisies, burgundy, violet, a dusty blue and little bits of mustard, like somebody pressed a spring paddock into it. The flowers are small, so it reads as pretty rather than loud, and the grey goes with every pair of sandals I already own.

It is soft and lightweight, which in a car with Graham in charge of the air conditioning matters more than you would think. It is relaxed without being shapeless. And it dresses up or down depending on what goes with it, sandals and a straw bag for the market, or a cardigan over the top when the sea breeze comes in of an evening.

That is really all there is to it. One piece, somebody thought about it, and it works.

What happened at the growers market

Graham and I had a little cottage at Gerringong for the long weekend, and on the Saturday morning we drove over to the growers market at Berry. I had been in the jumpsuit since we left Epping the day before, apart from sleeping in it, which I did not.

Three women asked me where it was from. The first was the young woman on the strawberry stall, who asked before she had given me my change. The second was a lady my age in the queue for the sourdough. The third was standing behind me at the honey table and said, with some feeling, that she had been dressing for the car for thirty years and would I please tell her where I got it.

And Graham, who has not commented on anything I have worn since our daughter’s wedding, looked over from the coffee van and said I looked like I was actually on holiday for once. I have decided to take that as the compliment it very nearly was.

What I noticed more than any of that was that I did not think about it once. I got out of the car, I walked the market, I carried a basket of strawberries up to the headland that afternoon and sat on the grass, and there was nothing to adjust and nothing I wished I had changed into.

The second one is the Marine Wave

I ordered the second one that same Saturday night, sitting on the cottage veranda, looking at the actual sea, because once you have found the thing that works you do not muck about.

It is called the Marine Wave, and it is the other mood entirely. A sea-glass teal, with fine black lines rolling across the top of it like swell coming in, and down the legs a whole school of little navy fish all swimming the same way. The same relaxed one-piece, the same straps over a white tee, just made for the water.

It arrived on the Wednesday. The next weekend we went back down for Kiama, and I wore it along the coast walk with the swell coming in against the rocks, and a woman with two grandchildren and a kite stopped me to ask. That made four.

Three things I have learned since

One. One piece is one decision. I pack it, I wear it in the car, I wear it when I get there. The three just-in-case outfits have not been out of the wardrobe since.

Two. The sizing is honest. Both run from a small all the way up to a 5XL, and it is the same relaxed cut the whole way through, not a different shape once you pass a certain number.

Three. Buy the two moods. The quiet wildflower one for the car, the market and the pub dinner. The Marine Wave for anywhere near the water. Between them that is the whole weekend bag now.

About the price

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

Each one is $79.95. It was $160.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay more than that at a department store for a pair of travel pants that make you look like the car.

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 make room before summer.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and read the reviews before I ordered the second one. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman from Milton had written, “I packed one for a week at the coast and wore it four days out of seven. Nobody guessed it was the comfy option.” That was the one that settled it.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat on that cottage veranda with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years packing three outfits for a weekend away and then living in the same tired travel pants, stop packing more. Pack one thing that works in the car and still works when you get out of it, and let the rest stay home.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first summer stock is already going, so once this run is gone, it is gone.

I get dressed for where I am going now. The car can put up with it.

Dianne