A letter from a reader

At 64, I had not worn a long floral dress since I was twenty-four. I thought they were something you grow out of

The last thing I wrote that anybody else read was my own name on a sticky label at the door of my school reunion, with my maiden name in brackets underneath so the girls would know who I was. That is the full extent of my writing career. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman what to put on.

But three different women asked me about a dress at that reunion, and I have told the story so many times since that it seemed easier to write it down once and be done with it.

It was forty-five years since we left school. Kaye, who sat next to me in typing and moved to Canberra when she married, organised a lunch for the whole class in the rose gardens at Old Parliament House. A month before, she sent everybody an envelope of old photographs so we could all have a laugh. Most of them were of hairstyles we would rather forget. One of them was of me.

I was twenty-four, at a friend's wedding, standing on the church steps in a long floral dress with my hair halfway down my back. I put it on the fridge. On the Thursday, my granddaughter came in from school, looked at it for a long time, and then looked at me.

Nan, is that you? Why do you not dress like that any more?

I did not have a good answer. I had the kids, and then I had thirty years on the front desk of a medical centre, and somewhere in there I became a woman in sensible navy slacks and a nice top. The long floral dresses went to the op shop one at a time, and I never thought to miss them.

I did not decide to stop wearing them. Nobody does. You just grow out of them, or you think you have.

How it happens

Somewhere around forty, the long floral dresses in the shops start to look like they are meant for somebody else. Girls at music festivals. Brides. Women who have never had to stand up and sit down forty times in a day answering the phone.

And the few you do try on are either so young you feel like you are in fancy dress, or so plain and shapeless you look like you are wearing the curtains. So you go home with navy slacks. They are sensible, they wash well, and nobody looks twice.

That is the choice the shops leave us with. Pretty, or your age. I had picked my age so many times I had forgotten I was ever allowed the other one.

Then Carol told me where to look

What changed my mind was Carol, who was the practice nurse for most of the years I was on the desk and has always known where everything comes from. I showed her the photo on my phone and said that dress was the last pretty thing I ever owned. She did not laugh. She said they still make them, and that I had just stopped looking in the right places.

She sent me to a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. I sat up that night with my reading glasses on and ordered one before I could talk myself out of it.

The one I chose is called the Bella. It is a long, loose dress in a soft warm beige, with coral and pink roses on long thin branches, like something painted for an old botany book. The roses sit over the shoulders and down the sleeves, the middle of the skirt is mostly quiet beige, and then they gather in a deep border of big roses right around the hem.

It has a simple V-neck, three-quarter sleeves with a little turned-back cuff, and it is gathered just under the bust so the skirt falls loose all the way to the ankle. Nothing pinches and nothing clings. It is the dress in the photograph, made for the woman I am now.

What happened at the reunion

Graham drove us down on the Friday and we stayed at a motel in Queanbeyan. I wore the Bella with flat tan sandals and a straw hat, and Graham said, Di, I have seen this dress before. He had not. He had seen the photograph.

Three women asked me about it before we had even sat down to lunch. The first was a woman down from Melbourne to see the roses, who stopped me on the gravel path. The second was the young gardener deadheading the beds by the gate. The third was Denise.

Denise was our school captain. She still keeps the class photo albums, and in forty-five years I do not think I have heard her say a kind word about anybody's clothes. She found me by the roses, looked me up and down, and said, Dianne. You have come back as yourself. Then she asked for the name of the shop.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. Three hours in the car, a long lunch, a slow walk round every rose bed in the place, and I did not once tug at anything or wish I had worn the slacks. When Kaye sent round the group photo that night, I was in the middle of it, which has not happened in a very long time.

On the Sunday morning, before we drove home, I wore it again for a walk along the lake with Graham. He took more photos of me in one morning than he has in ten years.

Three things I have learned since

One. You do not grow out of long floral dresses. You grow out of the cut. A dress that is loose, sits under the bust and covers your arms is a completely different thing to what I was wearing at twenty-four, and it still feels like the same girl wearing it.

Two. Pretty does not have to mean uncomfortable. I had believed for forty years that a pretty dress was something you put up with for an afternoon. This one went in the car, round a garden and through a three-hour lunch, and I would have happily slept in it.

Three. Your grandchildren notice. My granddaughter has asked for the photo from the reunion to go on the fridge next to the old one. She says it is the same lady.

About the price

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

The Bella is $76.95. It was $154.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay that much for a dress that looks lovely on the hanger and like a nightie on you.

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 Goulburn had written, “I have not worn a long dress in thirty years and I felt like myself again the minute I put it on. My husband asked where I was going. I said nowhere, I just like it.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Denise, I am told, ordered hers from the motel that night.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If there is a photo of you somewhere, in a drawer or on a fridge, of the girl you used to be in a dress you loved, and you have quietly decided she is gone, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will make you twenty-four again. It will not, and I would not go back for quids. But there is something about catching yourself in a shop window and recognising the woman looking back that I had stopped expecting. I would not want you to stop expecting it too.

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

Forty years in sensible navy. I wore roses to the reunion, and the girl on the church steps came with me.

Dianne