For Years I Quietly Dreaded Getting Dressed. One Summer Dress Changed The Whole Morning.

A note from a reader about the small Devon boutique dress that made reaching into the wardrobe feel like a small pleasure again, instead of a chore she had been putting off.

I am 61 years old, and for longer than I would like to admit, the first quiet dread of my day arrived the moment I opened the wardrobe.

It was not a dramatic feeling. Nobody else would have noticed it. But it was there, most mornings, standing in front of a wardrobe full of clothes and feeling that every single thing in it was either uncomfortable or frumpy, and very often both.

The trousers dug in by lunchtime. The blouses I had once liked now felt fussy and tight across the top. And the summer dresses, the ones I had bought hopefully over the years, I would pull one on, catch sight of myself in the bedroom mirror, and quietly put it back. Too clingy. Too warm. Shaped like a tent. Shaped for a woman half my age.

So most days I gave up and reached for the same tired tunic over leggings, the laziest possible compromise, and got on with it. I told myself it did not matter. I am 61. Who am I dressing for.

I am telling you this because three weeks ago a single summer dress made that small daily dread disappear, and I did not expect a piece of clothing to be able to do that.

What it is

The dress is called the Tansy. It comes from a small coastal boutique called Torquay Boutique that I had never heard of until a neighbour of mine mentioned them over the fence.

It is a midi length summer dress. It falls to a length that, for a woman my age, is exactly right, below the knee, not too short and not down to the ankles. The fabric is light and breathable, the sort that moves when you move and lets the air through on a warm day instead of holding the heat against you. It has a soft shape that skims rather than clings, and a neckline that sits where I want it to sit, not too high, not too low.

And the first time I put it on, I did not put on something else.

That, after the last few years, was the part that surprised me. I looked in the mirror and I did not reach for the cardigan to cover up, and I did not reach for the next thing. I just got dressed, and went out.

For the first time in years, getting dressed felt like a small pleasure instead of a small defeat.

On the porch with a book and an iced tea. The first thing I reach for now.

What changed in three weeks

I wore it to the farmers market on the Saturday. I wore it to a long lunch with my sister where I almost wore something dressier, looked at it, and thought, no. I wore it in the garden on a hot Wednesday, and it stayed cool when the old dresses would have had me sticking to myself by noon. I wore it to my granddaughter Lily's swimming lesson, in the soft folding chair beside the pool, and I did not spend the hour adjusting anything.

Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. It does not cling. It is light enough to breathe on a warm day and still hangs the way a proper summer dress is meant to, skimming the bits I would rather skim.

2. It stays cool. I am at the age where being too warm has stopped being a small inconvenience and become a genuine misery. This one lets the air move. I have worn it on the warmest days we have had and stayed comfortable.

3. It does not announce itself. No loud slogan, no fussy trim. It is one solid colour in a quiet, flattering shape, and it does not make me feel like I am wearing a costume. It makes me feel like I am dressed.

I had forgotten that a dress was allowed to be comfortable and look good at the same time.

→ Read about the Tansy

Emma rang me

After the second week my daughter Emma, who is thirty four and lives in London, rang me and said, "Mum. You sound different."

I asked her what she meant.

She said, "in every photo you have sent me lately you look like you are actually enjoying yourself. What have you done."

I told her I had simply bought a dress I liked wearing. She thought about that for a long second, then asked me where it had come from. I told her. She ordered her own the next morning. She ordered hers in the blue.

"I will be honest, Mum," she said a few days later. "I have not seen you reach for the same dress with that much relief in maybe ten years."

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Tansy for £47.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of tea in the garden and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a comfortable summer dress like this in the last few years.

• Seasalt midi dress, £79.95
• White Stuff, £65
• Torquay Tansy, £47.95

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. …how??

What I would tell you if we were friends

If we were sitting in my garden with a cup of tea, and you had asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that women our age have been quietly told by the entire fashion industry that the choice is either a tent or something built for a girl of twenty five. The Tansy is the small, sensible, joyful middle, comfortable and cool and still flattering, and it has been a surprisingly long time since I found one.

I would tell you that the turquoise is the one I wear the most, the blue is the one my sister told me looks best on me, and the green is the one I have my eye on next. I would tell you to buy two. If you buy two the stack discount comes off, and if you do what I did, you will end up reaching for one of them every other day anyway.

I would tell you that the popular colours are already showing as almost sold out. The green was flagged as almost gone when I checked again this morning, and the anniversary sale ends when the sizes do, not a day later.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been quietly dreading the wardrobe in the morning and reaching for something out of resignation instead of relief, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Susan