A letter from a reader

At 64, after thirty years in a navy work blazer, every jacket I put on made me look like I was about to ask for your Medicare card

Graham's trophy is on the kitchen bench in front of me as I write this, and he has moved it twice so that I can see it properly, so forgive me if I lose my thread. I have never written anything like this before. I am not a writer, and I have never been one for telling other women what to put on.

But three different women asked me about a jacket at the presentation night at the golf club in Mudgee last Saturday, and I have explained it so many times since that it seemed easier to write it down once.

Every spring Graham's golf club goes away for a weekend. Two days on a country course, a motel full of men comparing handicaps, and on the Saturday night a presentation dinner in the clubhouse with speeches, a raffle and a table of little trophies. This year Graham had been told, quietly, that he might want to stay for the end. So I made an effort. I put on my good black trousers and the navy blazer I keep for weddings and funerals, and walked out of the motel bathroom. Graham looked up from his shoelaces and said it.

Di, you look like you are about to ask them for their Medicare card.

He was not wrong, and that was the worst of it. For thirty years I sat behind the front desk of a medical centre in a navy blazer with a name badge on the lapel. I retired and handed back the badge, but I never quite got out of the blazer. Every jacket I tried on in a shop looked like that one. So for anything smart I wore a cardigan instead, and spent the evening feeling underdressed.

I did not choose to dress like the front desk on my days off. Nobody does. It creeps up on you.

How it happens

When you work in a uniform for long enough, it stops being clothes and becomes the shape you think of as smart. Navy, plain, two buttons, straight down. It is the jacket that says you are there to be useful.

Then you stop working, and the shops are full of exactly the same jacket. Navy, black, grey, cut like a filing cabinet, and every one of them looks like it is waiting for you to clock on.

So you are left with a choice nobody should have to make. Look smart and feel like you are back at work. Or feel like yourself in a cardigan and look like you have come to help with the urn.

Then Carol walked into the café

What changed my mind was Carol. Carol was the practice nurse for most of the years I was on the desk, so she wore the same navy as me for the best part of twenty years. We have coffee in Epping every Wednesday.

A few weeks before Mudgee she came in wearing a blazer that was nothing like a uniform. White, printed all over, the sort of thing you notice from the door. She sat down and said, before I could say a word, that she had decided she was never wearing navy again. It was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. They do these blazers in a whole range of prints, and the one I fell for was the Noemine. I ordered it on the train home.

The Noemine is a tailored blazer on a crisp white ground, painted all over with big loose black brushstrokes and wide sweeps of gold. It has a notched lapel, long sleeves and one gold button at the waist. That is all. There is nothing fussy about it, because the print does the talking.

It is shaped through the waist without pulling anywhere, and it finishes just on the hip, so it sits right over trousers and over jeans. It is light, but it holds its shape, and it still looked crisp at the end of the evening after a three-hour drive and a two-hour dinner. It looks smart. It just does not look like anybody's uniform.

What happened at the presentation night

I wore it buttoned, over a plain black top and my cream trousers, with black flats and the little gold earrings Graham gave me for our thirtieth. Graham wore the club tie, which he informed me was the dress code, and which nobody else was wearing.

Three women asked me where the jacket was from before the main course came out. The first was the woman at the next table, whose husband had just won the longest drive. The second was the young girl behind the bar, who asked while she was pouring my wine. The third was Pauline.

Pauline is the club president's wife. She has run the presentation night raffle for twenty years, and in all that time I have never heard her pass comment on anybody's outfit, unless it was to say that the raffle tickets were a dollar each and no, she did not have change. She stopped at our table with her book of tickets, looked me up and down, and asked where on earth I had got it. Then she sold me ten tickets. From Pauline, that is a standing ovation.

Graham won most improved. At sixty-four. He made a speech about it that was longer than anybody else's, and I am fairly sure more people asked me about my jacket that evening than asked him about his trophy. He has not mentioned that, and neither have I, until now.

The Wednesday after, I wore it open over a white t-shirt and jeans to coffee with Carol, and felt completely myself. She said we looked like we were starting a gallery. I said that sounded like more work than the front desk.

Three things I have learned since

One. Smart is not the same as uniform. For years I thought looking smart meant looking like I worked somewhere. It turns out a jacket can be just as smart and look like it belongs to you.

Two. Let the jacket do the work. With a print like this, everything underneath can be plain. Black top, cream trousers, done. Getting ready for the dinner took me ten minutes, and eight of those were my hair.

Three. It goes up and down. Buttoned over black for a dinner, open over jeans for coffee. It is the only jacket I own that I have worn twice in one week and wanted to wear a third time.

About the price

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

The Noemine is $90.95. It was $182.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay more than that at a department store for a plain navy jacket that looks like it is waiting for a name badge.

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 Rylstone had written, “I bought it for my granddaughter's graduation and wore it to church the next morning. Two people asked if I had been somewhere special. I told them I had, twice.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Carol, I should say, has since bought a second one, in a different print.

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 you spent your working life in a uniform jacket, and every blazer you have tried on since still looks like it, so that for every dinner and every do you reach for a cardigan and feel underdressed all night, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because a jacket will change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking into a room dressed as yourself, not as the person who used to check everybody in, and I would like you to have that too.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and the middle sizes go first. And with the Christmas parties around the corner, I would not leave it too long.

Thirty years of people handing me their Medicare card. Now they ask me where I got my jacket.

Dianne