A letter from a reader

At 64, I did my gardening in whatever Graham had worn out first

Graham says I never do things by halves, so you will have to bear with me, because I have never written anything meant for other people to read in my life, and I have certainly never thought it my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about a jumpsuit at the dog park by the oval on Saturday morning, and I have now explained it enough times, standing there with Banjo winding his lead around my legs, that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

It started on a Thursday. I do the school pickup on Thursdays, and I had come straight from the garden, in an old checked shirt of Graham’s and the grey trackpants I keep for the beds. My granddaughter climbed into the car, looked at me for a moment, and said it.

Nanna, why are you always wearing Poppy’s clothes?

I laughed it off in the car. Then I got home and stood in front of the wardrobe, and she was right. Everything I owned for actually living in, the garden, the dog, the running around, was either grey, or navy, or something of Graham’s that had been demoted to me. The nice things hung at the other end, waiting for occasions that come around about four times a year.

I did not choose to dress like that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides one morning to spend her days in her husband’s worn-out shirts. It happens quietly, one sensible decision at a time, until a seven-year-old points it out from the back seat.

How it happens

You keep the good things for best. Everyone our age was taught that, and it sounds like wisdom right up until you notice what it actually means, which is that the person who gets your worst clothes, every single day, is you.

The garden got the bottom of the pile. The dog park got whatever was clean. And the shops do not exactly fight you on it. Go and look at what is sold to women over sixty for everyday. Grey marle, navy, beige, all of it soft-spoken and apologetic, all of it described as practical, which we both know is a polite way of saying nobody will look at you in it.

And once that is all you wear, you stop expecting anything else from a Tuesday. You put on the grey trackpants because they are there. Nobody says anything. That is rather the point of them.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought cheerful clothes were for other women. A print, at 64, in a jumpsuit of all things, felt like something you needed to be tall or twenty or brave for. So when I first saw this one, on a woman about my age at the nursery, bent over the seedling trays without a care in the world, my first thought was good on her, and my second thought was not for me.

It took me a week to work out that both thoughts could not be true at once. She was not tall, or twenty. She just looked like somebody who was enjoying her Saturday. It was never the print that was the problem. It was the shapeless, colourless things I had been calling sensible.

The one I bought is called the Soft Yellow Jumpsuit

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

It is a relaxed one-piece in the softest washed yellow, with little bees drifting all over it, cream wings and striped bodies, scattered about like they have somewhere pleasant to be. There is a proper bib front, straps you can adjust, and room in the legs to actually move. It sounds like a lot on paper. On, it just looks easy.

It goes on in seconds, which I did not expect to care about and now care about a great deal. One piece, no waistband, no zip pressing into you when you bend. I knelt over the vegetable beds all of that first morning and stood back up without a single adjustment, which at my age is its own small miracle.

And it is light. The fabric is soft and washed-feeling and it moves when you do, so you forget it entirely, which it turns out is the whole trick.

What happened at the dog park

I wore it to the oval on Saturday, straight from the garden, with my old sandals and not a scrap of planning.

Three women asked me about it. Three. One of them was Jenny from over the road, who has watched me leave the house for eleven years and never once passed comment on any of it.

Jenny looked me up and down and said I was very smart for somebody pulling weeds. From Jenny, that is practically a ticker-tape parade.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that I forgot I had it on. I did not tug at anything, or hold my breath sitting down, or think about my middle once. I threw the ball for Banjo, talked too long at the gate, and came home feeling like somebody who had had a nice morning.

The next day I put it straight back on for the watering. It has barely made it back to the wardrobe since.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. It runs from a small 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. Getting dressed becomes one decision. There is no matching a top to a bottom, no belt, no fuss. You step in, do up the straps, and the morning is yours. I did not realise how much thought I was spending on clothes I did not even like.

Three. It goes both ways. Dirt under your knees in the morning, then a rinse of the hands and down the shops after, and nobody would guess. When the evening cools, a light cardigan over the top and it carries you through dinner in the courtyard.

About the price

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

The Soft Yellow Jumpsuit is $79.95. It was $160.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any shopping centre and pay more than that for something plain that will have given up 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 as the first summer stock comes 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. One woman from Thirroul had written, “Bought it for pottering about at home and now I wear it everywhere. Roomy where you want it and the bees make people smile.” That was the one that decided it for me.

I went back the next week just to look at the other prints. I am not saying a second one is on its way. I am not saying it is not.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If your everyday clothes are the ones nothing better could be found for, the demoted shirts and the greys you never chose, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look. Not because a jumpsuit will change your life. It will not. But there is something in catching sight of yourself in the glass on an ordinary Tuesday and liking what you see 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 now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And once this first run of summer stock is gone, it is gone.

The garden gets my best clothes now.

Dianne