A letter from a reader

At 64, my daughter went through my wardrobe and asked when I had decided flowers were against the rules

It has taken me three evenings and my good reading glasses to get this written, which should tell you straight away that I am not a writer. I will also say that in sixty-four years I have never once told another woman what she ought to wear, and I am not about to start. I am only telling you what happened.

But three different women asked me about a dress at school pickup on Thursday, and I have now explained it enough times at the gate that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started a few weeks back, right when the wattle came out. My daughter was over dropping off the grandkids, and she went hunting through my wardrobe for a jumper to borrow. She stood there with the door open for a good while, and then she said it.

Mum, when did you decide flowers were against the rules?

I laughed, and then I looked properly, and she had a point. Navy, grey, stone, black, and one mushroom-coloured cardigan Graham says makes me look like the fence. Rail after rail of sensible. Not one single thing in there with so much as a petal on it.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to dress like a filing cabinet. It happens quietly, one sensible purchase at a time, until one day your daughter opens a door and there it is.

How it happens

I used to wear flowers. In my thirties I had a frangipani-print sundress I wore until the hem gave out, and I never once felt silly in it.

What changed was not me. It was the shops.

Somewhere along the way the big chains decided that women over a certain age want to disappear. Go and have a look. Rack after rack of the same three dark shades, cut into the same shapeless shapes, all of it labelled easy or forgiving, which we all know is a polite way of saying nobody thought about you very hard.

And the florals they do stock are either made for a twenty-year-old at a music festival, or they are so loud they wear you instead of the other way round. So you put them back, and you buy the navy one, and nobody says anything. Which is rather the point.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect a lot of us have.

I had decided that a proper floral, a big one, was simply not available to me any more. Too much, I would say to myself in the changing room, and back on the rack it went.

It turns out that was never the flowers.

I have paid proper attention to this since. What makes a floral look silly is not the size of the blooms. It is a cheap, shouty print on a dress cut like a sack. The same flowers, painted soft like something from a florist's window, on a shape that actually skims and follows you, read completely differently. They read as a decision. That is the whole difference, and it took me until 64 to work it out.

The dress is called the Ava

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

The dress is called the Ava. A sleeveless midi with a simple round neck, covered in painted-looking flowers, pinks and creams with little touches of blue, and the leaves in every green you can think of. It is the sort of print you keep finding new corners of, without it ever shouting at anybody.

It is light and it breathes, which matters more every week now the days are warming up. The cut is relaxed through the middle and it drapes rather than clings. And it does not crease the moment you sit down, which anyone who has arrived somewhere looking like they travelled in the boot will appreciate.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a dress that somebody thought about.

What happened at school pickup

I collect the grandkids on Thursdays, and I wore it to the gate with my white sandals, mostly because it was the first warm afternoon of the season and I could not think of a reason not to.

Three women asked me about it. Three. One of them was Jenny from over the road, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I have worn.

She said I looked like I was off somewhere nicer than the school gate. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that I forgot about it. I did not spend the afternoon tugging at anything or checking whether it had ridden up. I stood at the gate, I carried two school bags and a half-eaten sandwich, and I did not think about what I had on once.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk Banjo round the oval, and felt completely myself in it. That is the rarest sort of dress. The one you can wear to something special and then wear out with a cavoodle at seven in the morning, and feel right either way.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. It runs from an S all the way to a 5XL, and it is the same relaxed cut the whole way up, not a different shape once you pass a certain number. I wish more places would bother with that.

Two. You stop thinking about yourself. The length settles the leg question before it is asked, and the cut skims instead of clinging, so there is no adjusting, no checking, no wondering. It is a small thing and it changes the whole day.

Three. It goes both ways. Sandals and my good earrings for a birthday lunch, or exactly as it is for the shops. And when the evening cools off, a light cardigan over the top finishes it and you would never know it was the same dress.

About the price

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

The Ava is $65.95. It was $132.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any shopping centre and pay more than that for a spring dress that will be misshapen by Christmas.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a spring sale to make room for the summer stock coming in.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. 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. Real people, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

Then I sent the link to my daughter, who started all this, and told her she was not borrowing mine.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were out on the verandah with a cuppa and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent the last few springs reaching for the same navy pants and the same plain top, not because you like them but because everything with a bit of life in it seemed meant for somebody else, 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 getting dressed in the morning and recognising yourself that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And with the warm weather on its way, the first run of summer stock is already going out the door.

I have stopped saving the flowers for other women.

Dianne