A letter from a reader

At 64, I had not worn red in forty years because a woman with a suitcase of fabric swatches told me I was a Summer

The only thing I have written in a fortnight is a postcard to the grandkids with a whale on the front, and I ran out of room before I got to the whale. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my business to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three women asked me about a dress on a boat in Hervey Bay last week, and Jenny from over the road has already told the story at two morning teas and got it wrong both times. So here it is, from me, once.

Forty-odd years ago, when everybody was having their colours done, a friend had a party where a woman came round with a suitcase full of little fabric squares. She held them up under my chin one by one, in front of the whole lounge room, and announced that I was a Summer. Soft blue, dusty rose, dove grey. Never red. Never orange. Red, she said, would drag me down.

I believed her. I still had the little plastic wallet of swatches she gave me, in the drawer of my dressing table. A month ago Graham went looking for the spare car key, found it, held it up and said it.

Di, you are not still taking orders from a woman you met once at a party forty years ago.

I was, though. I opened the wardrobe to prove him wrong and every single thing in it had come out of that wallet. Forty years of dusty blue.

I did not decide to give up colour. Nobody does. You are handed a rule once, and it quietly becomes the way you get dressed.

How it happens

A rule like that is very comfortable. You never have to stand in a shop wondering. You walk past anything bright, because that is not for you, and you reach for the soft blue because it is safe, and nobody has ever said a word against soft blue.

The trouble is nobody says a word for it either. You go to a lunch, you go to a wedding, you go on holiday, and you look nice. Pleasant. The same as last time.

And somewhere in your sixties you look at the photos and realise you have been standing at the back of every one of them in the same three shades for most of your life, because a stranger with a suitcase said so.

Then Lyn turned up in red

What changed my mind was Lyn, Graham's sister. She was at that same party all those years ago, and the swatch lady told her she was an Autumn, so Lyn has lived in rust and mustard ever since. Then at Sunday lunch at her villa in Mittagong she opened the door in a dress covered in red and pink, and she looked ten times more like herself than she had in years.

I said, Lyn, you are an Autumn. She said, I have retired from being an Autumn, Dianne. I am seventy-one and I will be whatever season I like. Then she told me it was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. I ordered mine that evening.

The one I chose is called the Joan. It is red, orange and pink all over, in little speckles and dabs with tiny black flecks through it, like a garden seen through a sunny window. From a distance it just reads as warm and bright. Up close it is the sort of print people want to touch.

It has a simple V-neck with a neat binding, and short sleeves that come to just above the elbow with a little turned cuff. There is a seam just under the bust, and below it the skirt is gently gathered and falls loose to the middle of the calf. Nothing clings and nothing pinches. It moves when you walk. It also comes in blue, pink, purple and brown, and I will admit the blue would have suited the swatch lady very well.

What happened on the boat

Graham and I went up to Hervey Bay for a spring week with Jenny from over the road and her husband Phil. We booked the last whale-watching boat of the season out of Urangan, and the day came up twenty-eight degrees with the bay as flat as a plate. I wore the Joan with flat tan sandals and nothing else in the way of fuss.

Three women asked me about the dress before we were back at the harbour. The first was a woman beside me at the rail on the top deck, up from Toowoomba with her sister, who asked while we were waiting for a mother and calf to come back up. The second was the young deckhand handing round the morning tea. The third was Jenny.

Jenny has lived across the road from me for nearly thirty years and has never once passed a remark on what I have on. She looked me up and down by the scones and said, Dianne Prescott. In red. I am going to have to sit down. Then she asked for the name of the shop.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. I did not spend the day wondering whether red was dragging me down. I was too busy watching a calf roll over on its back about thirty metres from the boat. When Phil sent the photos through that night, there I was at the rail in red, laughing, and I did not look washed out or loud or anything the swatch lady warned me about. I looked like I was having a lovely time. Which I was.

On our last evening I wore it again to get fish and chips at the end of the Urangan Pier at sunset. Graham, who does not notice clothes, said he could pick me out from the other end of the pier. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

Three things I have learned since

One. A rule you were given once is not a rule. I let one stranger choose my colours for forty years. It turns out she was guessing, the same as the rest of us.

Two. A good print does the work for you. I did not need a necklace, a scarf or a cardigan to make it look like something. I put it on, I put my sandals on, and I was ready.

Three. Colour photographs better than you think. I am in more of the photos from that week than I have been in years of family dos, and for once I would happily put them on the fridge.

About the price

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

The Joan is $70.95. It was $142.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a dusty blue cardigan I never liked.

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 Gympie had written, “I was told years ago that red was not my colour. I wore this to my grandson's graduation and three people asked if I had done something with my hair.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Lyn has since bought the purple. Jenny, I am told, ordered hers before we had even landed back in Sydney.

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 the Cup lunch, a holiday or a Christmas do coming up this summer, and you already know you will reach for the same safe colour you always reach for, 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 out into a warm afternoon in a colour you were told you could not wear, and having nobody notice anything except how nice you look, 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 lunches coming, I would not leave it too long.

Forty years of dusty blue because of a woman with a suitcase. I wore red on a whale boat, and the sky did not fall in.

Dianne