A letter from a reader

At 64, I owned thirty years of tops and trousers that went with nothing. Graham said I looked like I had got dressed in three different rooms

I am writing this in the departure lounge at Adelaide airport with Graham asleep in the chair beside me, so if it wanders, blame the delay. I have never written anything like this before. I am not a writer, and I have never once told another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about an outfit at our family lunch in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday, and I have told the story so many times since that it seemed simpler to write it down once.

The lunch was Neville's. Neville is Graham's cousin, and at the end of every October he puts on the family Christmas lunch at a guesthouse in Hahndorf, two months early, because half the family is overseas or at the in-laws by December. There is a long table on the lawn, a ham, a pavlova, and one big family photograph before anybody is allowed to eat. The morning we left, I came out of the bedroom in a blue top, the beige trousers, and the grey cardigan I always take on planes. Graham looked up from his shoes and said it.

Di, you look like you got dressed in three different rooms.

The annoying thing is that he was right. The top was from one shop, the trousers from another, and the cardigan had been bought for a wedding ten years ago. None of them had ever met before that morning. That was every outfit I owned, really. Separate pieces, all perfectly nice, none of them on speaking terms.

I did not set out to dress like a jumble sale. Nobody does. It happens one sensible purchase at a time.

How it happens

You buy a good pair of trousers because they fit. You buy a top because it was on sale and the colour was nice. You buy a cardigan for a wedding because the church might be cold. Each one makes sense on its own, in the shop, under those lights.

Then twenty years go by and you have a wardrobe of pieces that were never introduced. Every morning is a little negotiation to get three of them to agree. And for anything that matters, a lunch with photos, you end up choosing between looking put together, which means something stiff and formal you never wear, or being comfortable, which means the blue top and the beige trousers again.

After enough years of it, you forget that clothes can simply go together because somebody made them that way.

Then Helen got off the train

What changed my mind was my oldest friend Helen, who came down from Woy Woy for the day in the middle of October. She stepped off the train at Epping in a long open cardigan and a top in the same colour, over printed trousers, and I thought she had had something made.

She had not. She looked like she had planned it, and she had not planned anything, she told me, she had just put it on. It was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. They do these three-piece sets in different prints, and the one I fell for was the Eirwen, in green. I ordered it that night, before I could talk myself back into the beige trousers.

There are three pieces. A long open cardigan in a soft sage green, plain, with long sleeves and no buttons to fiddle with, that falls straight down past the hips. A round-neck top underneath in exactly the same green. And wide-leg trousers printed with big leaves in sage and cream, which is what pulls the whole thing together.

The fabric is soft and light, and nothing about it is tight. The trousers are wide and easy, the cardigan just hangs open, and the green on top picks up the green in the leaves. I did not have to decide a single thing. That was the part I had not expected to enjoy so much.

What happened at Neville's 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 trousers that go with every shirt he owns, which he pointed out several times on the drive up from the airport.

Three women asked me where it was from before the pavlova came out. The first was Neville's daughter-in-law, while we were still finding our seats. The second was the young girl bringing round the dessert plates. The third was Bronwyn.

Bronwyn is Neville's older sister. She has kept the family photograph albums for fifty years, and in all that time I have never heard her say a word about anybody's clothes, unless it was to ask who let them wear that in a photo. She looked me up and down on the lawn and said it was the first time she had seen me match. Then she asked for the name of the shop. From Bronwyn, that is practically a speech.

What I noticed more than the compliments was the photograph. When Neville lined us all up on the lawn, I did not edge to the back row or hold my handbag in front of me. I stood where I was put. When the photo came through on the family group chat that night, I did not mind looking at it.

The week after, back home, I wore just the top and the trousers to the garden centre, and the cardigan over my navy dress to church. Three pieces, and they go off on their own quite happily too.

Three things I have learned since

One. Put together does not have to mean stiff. The Eirwen is as easy to wear as anything I own. It just happens to match, and matching turns out to be most of what people mean when they say you look nice.

Two. A decided outfit is a gift. I used to stand at the wardrobe for twenty minutes. Now on the mornings that matter, the outfit is already there, and I can spend the twenty minutes on my hair, or more likely on a cup of tea.

Three. The pieces earn their keep apart. The cardigan goes over nearly everything I own. The trousers go with a white top. So it is one outfit for the days that matter, and three useful things for the days that do not.

About the price

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

The Eirwen is $94.95. It was $190.00. That is for all three pieces.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay that at a department store for the trousers on their own, and then you still have to go and find something that goes with them.

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 Mount Barker had written, “I bought it for my son's engagement party and I have worn it four times since. For the first time in years I did not have to think about what goes with what.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Bronwyn, I am told, ordered hers from the guesthouse car park.

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 your wardrobe is full of nice pieces that have never been introduced, and every lunch with a camera at it starts with twenty minutes of trying to make a top and a pair of trousers get along, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because an outfit will change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking out of the bedroom already finished, without the little negotiation, 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 lunches about to start, I would not leave it too long.

Thirty years of getting dressed in three different rooms. Now I get dressed in one.

Dianne