A letter from a reader

At 64, I had worn the same good black trousers to every occasion for twenty years. I very nearly wore them to my own ruby anniversary

I have written exactly one speech in my life, and that was on Saturday, and Graham says it ran four minutes over. So you have been warned. 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 our anniversary lunch, and I have told the story so many times since that it seemed easier to write it down once and be done with it.

Graham and I have been married forty years this spring. The children decided we were having a proper lunch about it, at an old sandstone guesthouse down in Kangaroo Valley, with a long table in the garden and everyone who was at the wedding who is still with us. A fortnight before, my daughter rang to ask what I was wearing. I told her. There was a pause on the line, and then she said it.

Mum, you are not wearing the good black trousers to your own ruby anniversary.

The trouble was, she knew exactly which trousers I meant. I have worn them, with a nice top, to every do for twenty years. Weddings, christenings, Christmas, Graham's sixtieth, two funerals and a cruise. They are very good trousers. They have just been to more occasions than I have.

I did not decide to stop wearing dresses. Nobody does. It just happens, one sensible outfit at a time.

How it happens

Somewhere in your fifties, the long dresses in the shops start to look like they are meant for somebody else. Brides. Girls at the races. Women who have never had to sit through a four-hour lunch on a wooden chair.

And the few you do try on are either too much, so you feel like you are in costume, or so tight through the middle that you spend the whole day holding your breath. So you go home with trousers. They are safe, they are comfortable, and nobody looks twice.

That is the choice the shops leave us with. Dressed up, or able to enjoy yourself. I had picked comfortable so many times I had forgotten there was ever meant to be another option.

Then Lyn turned up in a long dress

What changed my mind was Lyn, Graham's sister, who is 71 and has never once been told what to wear by anybody. She had a few of us over to her villa for a spring garden party in September, and she came down the path in a long floral dress that moved when she walked, and she looked about ten years younger and completely at ease.

I asked her, very casually, where it was from. She told me a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney, and then she looked at my trousers and did not say anything, which from Lyn is a whole sentence.

The one I chose is called the Florendra. It is a long floral dress, and it comes in six colours. I went for the purple. Ruby is red, I know, and the red was lovely, but the purple was the one I kept going back to. It has purple flowers painted over a warm coral, soft and blurry at the edges, like a watercolour somebody left out in the rain.

It has a V-neckline, a gathered waist and a long flowing skirt that moves when you walk. The waist detail gives it a shape without anything pinching. And it is a long dress that you can actually sit down in, which, as it turned out, was the whole point.

What happened at the lunch

I wore it with flat tan sandals and the little gold earrings Graham gave me for our thirtieth. Graham wore his good shirt and the black trousers. He did point out that somebody in the family should keep up the tradition.

Three women asked me about the dress before the main course. The first was a woman at the next table on the verandah, who was there for a birthday and came over specially. The second was the young waitress, who asked while she was filling the water jugs. The third was Pam.

Pam has been married to Russell, Graham's best man, for forty years. In all that time I have never heard her say a single word about anybody's clothes, including at my wedding. She put her glass down, looked me up and down under the jacaranda, and said, Well. Somebody has remembered she is the bride. Then she asked for the name of the shop.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. We sat at that long table for four hours. I ate, I laughed, I got up to make the speech and sat back down again, and I did not once think about what I had on. When the photos came through on the family group chat that night, I looked at them twice.

The next weekend I wore it again to a garden party at Lyn's, with a cream cardigan over my shoulders for when the afternoon cooled off. Lyn said nothing at all. She just smiled.

Three things I have learned since

One. A long dress is not just for young women. It was never the length that put me off. It was the dresses that pinched, and the ones that looked like a costume. One that flows and lets you breathe is a different thing entirely.

Two. You can enjoy the occasion and look like you dressed for it. I had believed for twenty years that it was one or the other. It is not. I sat for four hours, I had two helpings of the pavlova, and I still looked like I had come to a celebration.

Three. Colour photographs better than black. I am in more photographs from that lunch than from the last ten years of family dos put together, and I like every one of them.

About the price

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

The Florendra is $78.95. It was $158.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay that much for a dress you will wear once and then never be able to sit down in again.

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 Ulladulla had written, “I wore it to my granddaughter's wedding and danced in it until they turned the lights on. I have never been so comfortable in a long dress.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Pam, I am told, ordered hers on the drive home.

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 wedding or a big birthday or a Christmas lunch coming up, and you already know which trousers you are going to wear because they are the ones you always wear, 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 walking into a room in something that feels like an occasion, and still being able to enjoy it, 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 the Christmas parties about to start, I would not leave it too long.

Forty years married, twenty years in the same black trousers. I wore purple to the ruby lunch.

Dianne