A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent thirty years making sure nobody in the waiting room would remember what I had on

Nearly everything I have written in my life was a phone message on a little pad. Mrs Doyle rang, results are in, please call back. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three women stopped me about a dress on the cliff walk at Bondi last week, and one of them was the last person on earth I expected to ask. So I am writing it down once, properly, and then I can stop explaining it.

I sat at the front desk of a doctors' surgery in Epping for thirty years. There was no uniform as such. There was Gwen, the practice manager, who told me on my first morning that the patients have enough to think about, and the girl on the desk should be somebody nobody remembers. Navy skirt, white blouse, plain cardigan for the air conditioning. So that is what I wore.

I retired, we had a nice lunch, and I went home and went on wearing it. I honestly did not notice. Then one Thursday I was collecting my granddaughter from school in a navy skirt and a white blouse, and she looked me up and down at the gate, seven years old, and asked me very politely.

Nan, do you still work at the doctor's?

I said no, darling, I finished years ago. She said, then why are you dressed like it? I did not have an answer. I still do not, really.

I never set out to disappear. Nobody does. You do a job well for long enough, and being unremarkable stops being what you do at work and turns into who you are.

How it happens

I do not think it is only receptionists. I think most women our age have a Gwen somewhere. A mother, a husband, a school, a mirror in a change room. Somebody told us early on that the safe thing was not to be noticed, and every shop since has been happy to help.

Go and look at what they hang up for women over sixty. Navy, stone, a bit of grey, and a very brave teal for the summer. All of it perfectly nice. All of it the sort of thing you could wear to a funeral or a parent-teacher night without one person being able to describe it afterwards.

So you end up with a choice nobody ever says out loud. You can dress your age and be invisible, or you can wear colour and feel like mutton in a costume. I picked invisible for thirty years, and I was very good at it.

Then Carol turned up in stripes

What changed it was Carol, who was the practice nurse beside me for eighteen of those years, and who I had only ever seen in a tunic. We met for coffee at Epping in September. I saw this woman walking across the car park in stripes and great big blocks of colour, and I looked straight past her, the way you do, until she sat down at my table.

I said, Carol, what on earth. She said, Di, I have spent my whole life in a colour chosen so that nobody would notice the stains. I have earned this. Then she told me it was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney, and that they had a whole collection of them. I looked it up on my phone before she had finished her scone, and I ordered mine that evening. I am still not sure who that was.

The one I chose is called the Zara. I will describe it, because you will not believe it otherwise. From the shoulders to the top of the thigh it is black and cream stripes, going straight across. Then, in one clean line, the stripes stop and the rest of the way down is big blocks of emerald green and rose pink, with orange and a strip of yellow down one side.

Graham looked at it on the hanger and asked whether they had run out of fabric halfway and finished it with whatever was left. I thought exactly the same thing. I very nearly sent it back without trying it on.

Then I put it on, and it is the cut that makes it work. It is relaxed and flowing and it does not cling anywhere, so all that colour is just hanging there calmly rather than shouting at you. It has a simple V-neck and nothing else going on. The long sleeves sit loose, and I push them up when the sun comes out. It is soft and light against the skin, and I forgot I had it on by the time I found my keys.

What happened at Bondi

Every year around now they put the big sculptures out along the cliffs from Bondi to Tamarama, and every year I go with Graham and I wear something navy. This year I wore the Zara, with my flat tan sandals and a straw hat, on a hot blue morning with half of Sydney on the path.

We had not reached the first sculpture when a woman in a very good wide hat stopped me to ask where it was from. The second was the young volunteer handing out the maps, who said she wanted to steal it. By then I had stopped at the rail to look at something enormous made of rusty steel, and Graham, who was eating an ice cream, told me to keep moving.

Stand still much longer, Di, and somebody will put a number on you.

The third was at Tamarama. I heard somebody say my name, and I turned around, and it was Gwen. Eighty-one years old, up from Cronulla with her daughter, in navy. She has never once in her life passed a remark on anything I have worn, because I had never given her anything to remark on. She looked at me from the neck down, slowly, the way she used to look at the petty cash. She said, Well, Dianne. That would never have got past me. Then she asked me where it was from.

What I noticed more than the compliments was how odd it felt to be looked at, and how quickly I stopped minding. I had thought I would spend the morning wanting to hide behind Graham. I was too hot and too busy for that. Nothing pinched, nothing rode up, and I got down the Tamarama steps with an ice cream of my own and did not give the dress another thought.

I wore it again the following Thursday to the school gate. My granddaughter inspected me and said, you do not work at the doctor's any more. I said no, darling, I do not.

Three things I have learned since

One. Loud is about the print, not the shape. I thought a dress like this would have to be fussy to go with it. It is the opposite. One V-neck, two loose sleeves, no belt, and it just gets on with things.

Two. Nobody is looking at what you are worried about. I was told my whole life that a woman my age should stay away from stripes going across. I spent that whole morning at Bondi being stared at, and every single person wanted to know where I bought it.

Three. You only have to get dressed once. With this much going on you do not need a necklace or a scarf or a good handbag. I put it on, I put my sandals on, and I was finished. It has shaved ten minutes off every morning.

About the price

I sat on the other side of a lot of invoices in thirty years, so I will tell you straight, the price made me suspicious.

The Zara is $74.95. It was $150.00.

My first thought was that a dress like this at that price would turn up looking like a tablecloth. I have paid more than that for navy cardigans that nobody has ever once asked me about.

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 Randwick had written, “I bought it on a dare from my sister and I have now worn it to two lunches and my grandson's graduation. I have never been asked about so many times in my life.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Gwen has since had her daughter order her one in a navy print. I am told she considers it a compromise.

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 you have a wardrobe full of things nobody could describe, and a lunch or a Christmas do coming up where you already know exactly which navy thing you will reach for, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look. There are more than twenty designs in the collection, and some of them are a good deal quieter than mine.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But I gave thirty years to being somebody nobody remembered, and I was paid for that. I do not know why I went on doing it for free.

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.

I saw Gwen again last week, and she remembered exactly what I had on.

Dianne