A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent thirty springs taking photos of my mum's irises. It never once occurred to me that I could wear them

I have filled in the RSVP card for every wedding in this family for forty years, tick the box, chicken or beef, and that is about the extent of my writing. I am not a writer, and telling another woman what she ought to wear to a do is not something I go in for.

But three women asked me about a dress at a lunch in the Yarra Valley earlier this spring, and one of them came all the way round a very long table to do it. So I am writing it down once, properly, because the reason I bought it is a bit of a story.

Mum's irises

When Mum sold the house in Ryde and moved into a unit, she made me promise to take the irises. They had been along her side fence for as long as I could remember, tall blue bearded ones, the colour of a good summer sky. So the week before settlement I went over with a bucket and a garden fork, and Graham drove us home with the bucket between my feet, complaining about the dirt on the mat.

I put them in along our side fence in Epping. That was thirty years ago. They have come up every spring since without me doing a thing to deserve it.

The trouble with irises is that they do not stay. They flower for about a fortnight, and then they are just leaves again for another year. So every spring I go out with the camera, and now the phone, and take the same photograph of the same fence. Graham says we have more pictures of those irises than of the grandchildren. He is not wrong. I have checked.

Thirty springs of photographs, and not one of them had me in it.

Then Jenny sent me a link

Jenny from over the road does not send me things. She is not a sender. So when my phone went one evening and it was a link from Jenny with one word underneath it, Di, I opened it straight away in case it was urgent.

It was a dress. Ivory, with tall blue irises painted all the way up it on long green stems. Not little sprigs either. Proper big ones, the right blue, looking the way Mum's look in the second week when they have all opened.

I went out to the side fence in my slippers with the phone and held it up next to the real ones. Graham came out to see what I was doing in the dark and said, they are not going to be able to tell you whether it fits, love.

It is called the Winsome, and it is from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique Jenny has been buying from all year without telling anybody. It has a square neckline and wide straps, so there is a proper bit of fabric on your shoulders, not a piece of string. The bodice is fitted and sits under a neat waistband, and below that the skirt is finely pleated all the way round, so the irises move when you walk.

I had been dreading the lunch, if I am honest. Not the people. The deciding. I have stood in front of the wardrobe before every do for forty years holding up the same three things, and I knew exactly how that afternoon would go. This time there was nothing to decide.

Barry and Ros's lunch

Barry and Ros are our oldest friends from the early days in Epping, and they moved down to Victoria to be near their daughter. For their fiftieth wedding anniversary the daughter booked a long lunch at a winery outside Healesville, on the verandah, with the vines running down the hill to the gums. We flew down for it. It was thirty one degrees by noon and nobody had told the weather it was only spring.

I wore the Winsome with flat sandals, because I know what a winery lawn does to a heel. The men were all in their good jackets, poor things, mopping their foreheads with the napkins.

Before the entrée had come out, a woman two seats along leaned over and asked where it was from. Then the waitress, a young girl with a tray full of glasses, said she loved it and went pink. And then Ros's sister Maureen, who was sitting right down the far end, got up in the middle of Barry's speech and came all the way round the table to have a proper look.

She held the skirt out between two fingers and said, those are bearded irises, I grow those. I said, so did my mum.

Maureen and I talked about irises for the rest of the afternoon. Rhizomes, and when you divide them, and the year the snails got hers. I have known Ros for forty years and I had met Maureen perhaps twice. By the cheese course she had my phone number and I had promised her a bucket.

Barry said afterwards that I had stolen his speech. Ros said I had done no such thing, it was a terrible speech, and anyway she wanted to know where the dress was from as well.

What Graham did when we got home

We got back to Epping late on the Sunday, and the irises along the fence were still going, just. On the Monday morning, before I had changed, Graham went and got the phone and said, go and stand over there.

He has never once offered to take a photograph of me in forty years. He holds a phone the way he holds a spanner. But he stood on the lawn and took four, and the third one is very nearly in focus.

Three things I have learned since

One. You can wear the thing you love. I had spent thirty years treating those irises as something to look at. It had simply never crossed my mind that they could come out with me.

Two. A good print starts the conversation for you. I am not a mingler. Three strangers and Ros's sister talked to me at that lunch, and every one of them started with the dress.

Three. Let somebody else take the photograph. I have been behind the camera at every spring of those irises. It took a dress to get me in front of it.

About the price

I sat behind a doctors' surgery front desk for thirty years and saw a great many invoices, so I will tell you straight, the price made me suspicious.

The Winsome is $91.95. It was $184.00.

My first thought was that for that money the irises would turn out to be a blurry photograph on something shiny. They are not. They look painted, and the pleats hang the way they should.

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 Lilydale had written, “I wore it to my granddaughter's christening and the vicar asked me where it was from before he asked the baby's name.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Maureen has since ordered one in a different print. She says hers is nicer. I have told her mine has a pedigree.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If there is a lunch or a do coming up this summer, and you already know you will be standing in front of the wardrobe holding up the same three things, give it ten minutes of an evening. There are twenty five dresses in the collection, all sorts of prints and colours, and you only need the one that means something to you.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But I have a photograph now of Mum's irises with me standing next to them, and I had waited thirty springs for it without knowing.

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

Thirty years of photographs of those irises. This is the first one I have framed.

Dianne