A letter from a reader

At 64, I packed eleven outfits for a week away and wore the same capri pants for six days of it

The only thing I write with any regularity is a packing list, and as you are about to find out, I am not much good at those either. So I will say it plainly at the start. I am not a writer, and I have never thought it my place to tell another woman what to put on.

But three different women asked me about a dress while Graham and I were away in the Queensland hinterland, and I have told the story so many times since we got home that it seemed easier to write it down once and be done with it.

Every spring Graham and I take one week away, just the two of us. This year it was a little cottage up near Montville, with a verandah, a view of the Glass House Mountains and a lemon tree by the back steps. And every year I pack the same way. One outfit for every possible thing that might happen, and then a spare in case of rain. Graham carried the suitcase out to the car, stopped on the front step, and said it.

Di, we are going for a week. We are not emigrating.

He was right, and the silly thing is that it never made any difference. Eleven outfits went up the highway, and I wore the same beige capri pants and the same loose shirt for six days out of seven. Everything else came home folded exactly the way it went.

I did not decide to stop wearing nice things on holiday. Nobody does. It just happens, one sensible pair of capri pants at a time.

How it happens

You pack the good things because you might go somewhere nice. Then you get there, and it is warm and a bit muggy, and you are in and out of the car all day, and the good things are either too dressy for a Tuesday or too fiddly to sit in.

So you reach for what is easy. The capri pants and the loose shirt that you could wear to Bunnings. They are comfortable, they do not crease, and nobody looks twice. The trouble is that you look exactly the same in every photo, wherever you are.

That is the choice the shops seem to leave us with. Comfortable, or looking like you made an effort. I had picked comfortable so many times I had forgotten there was meant to be another option.

What I had wrong

I thought the answer was to pack better. A smarter list, fewer shoes, the little zip bags with the rolled-up tops. Every year I packed more cleverly, and every year I wore the same capri pants.

What I actually needed was not more choices. It was one thing I would genuinely want to put on every morning. Something as easy as the capri pants that still looked like I had come on holiday on purpose.

Then Carol came back from Bali

What changed my mind was Carol, who I worked beside at the practice for nearly twenty years and who has never once over-packed in her life. She came round for a cuppa in September, just back from a fortnight away, and she was wearing a long printed dress with a pattern you could look at for an hour, and she looked cool and comfortable and completely put together.

I asked how many outfits she had taken. She said three dresses and a cardigan, and that she had worn the printed one five times. Then she told me it was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney, and I ordered mine that evening.

The one I chose is called the Esra. It is a relaxed dress that falls to the middle of the calf, with three-quarter sleeves and a V-neck. What caught me was the print. There is a big round medallion in red and coral sitting right under the neckline, with ornate flowers spreading out across a soft lilac grey, and then the skirt goes to a warm peachy colour with more red flowers and a border round the hem.

It is a loose cut that skims rather than clings, so on a warm, sticky day nothing sits against you. There are no buttons to do up and nothing to tie. You put it on over your head and you are dressed.

What happened in Montville

This year I packed the Esra, two other things and a cardigan. Graham carried the suitcase out to the car with one hand and did not say anything, which I took as a compliment.

On the Wednesday we drove round to a little teahouse with a long verandah looking out over the valley, for a Devonshire tea. Three women asked me about the dress before the scones came. The first was a woman at the next table, who was up from Brisbane with her sister. The second was the young girl who brought the tea, who asked while she was putting the pot down. The third was the woman at the counter as I paid, who wanted to know if it came in other colours.

Graham, who has not commented on anything I have worn in about thirty years, said on the drive back that I looked like I was actually on holiday this year.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. It was twenty-nine degrees and muggy, we were in and out of the car all day, and I did not once think about what I had on. I wore it four days out of the seven, to the markets, to dinner at the pub and out on the cottage verandah of an evening, and it looked just as good on the last day as on the first.

Three things I have learned since

One. You do not need more outfits, you need one you want to wear. The suitcase was never the problem. I was packing for a woman who never turned up.

Two. Easy does not have to mean plain. I had believed that comfortable clothes had to be beige and forgettable. This is as easy as anything I own, and it is the most looked-at thing in my wardrobe.

Three. A good print does the work for you. No necklace, no scarf, no fuss. I added flat tan sandals and that was me done for the day.

About the price

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

The Esra is $87.95. It was $176.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay a good deal more than that for a dress that goes on holiday and spends the week in the suitcase.

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 Nambour had written, “I took it to Fiji and wore it to breakfast, to the beach and to dinner. My husband asked if I had only packed the one dress.” That was the one that decided it for me.

The woman from Brisbane, I am told, ordered hers before they had finished their tea.

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 have a week away coming up, or Christmas at the beach, or just a long hot summer of ordinary days, and you already know you will spend it in the same capri pants, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something about putting on one easy thing in the morning and feeling like yourself all day that I had quietly given up on. I would not want you to give up on it too.

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

Eleven outfits last year. Three this year. Graham says it is the lightest that suitcase has been in forty years.

Dianne