I Have Lived In One Striped Dress All Summer, And For The First Time In Years I Have Not Felt Hot, Clingy Or Frumpy.

A note from a reader about the small Devon boutique dress that stays cool in the heat and, somehow, quietly flatters a 61 year old who had given up on summer dresses.

I am 61 years old, and for the last few summers I have quietly dreaded the heat, because every dress I owned either stuck to me, clung in all the wrong places, or made me feel frumpy the moment I caught myself in the mirror.

I do not think I am alone in this. If you are a woman somewhere near my age, you will know the exact feeling I mean.

You stand in front of the wardrobe on a warm morning. It is going to be one of those close, humid days. And every single thing in there is wrong. The pretty dresses are too tight across the middle now, and they cling the second you start to feel warm. The cool, loose ones hang off you like a tent and add ten years. So you reach, again, for the same dark trousers and the same loose top, and you spend the whole day a little too hot and a little too covered up.

This is the summer that stopped, for me. And it stopped because of one dress.

It is called the Lolita, a breezy striped dress, and it comes from a small coastal boutique called Torquay Boutique that I had never heard of until a neighbour mentioned them over the fence. I want to tell you what it is, because I think you have been quietly looking for it for a long time without quite knowing how to ask for it.

What it is

It is a long sleeved striped midi dress in a lightweight woven blend. The stripes run vertically, in soft, neutral tones, which is the quiet, polished sort of stripe rather than the loud deck chair sort. It has a gentle A line shape that flares a little from the body and skims past the middle instead of gripping it.

That last part is the whole thing, really. It does not cling.

The fabric is soft and light, and it genuinely moves with you. On the first proper hot day we had, I wore it to potter in the garden and then out to the shops, and I realised at about four in the afternoon that I had not once felt that sticky, clinging, want to peel it off feeling that I have come to associate with summer.

I have spent six years adjusting other people's clothes in my head, thinking, if only this were a little looser here, a little longer there, a little cooler. The Lolita is the first one I did not have to argue with.

Folded by the iced tea, ready for the hottest part of the day.

For the first time in years, warm weather is not something I have to dress around.

Emma rang me

After I had worn it most of a fortnight, my daughter Emma, who is thirty four and lives in London, rang me.

"Mum," she said, "you sound different lately. Lighter. What have you been up to?"

I told her, honestly, that I had simply stopped dreading getting dressed. That I had found a dress that kept me cool and did not cling, and that I had been wearing it half to death.

She wanted to know where it had come from. I told her. She ordered her own that evening. She ordered hers in the blue.

"I have not heard you talk about a dress like this in years, Mum," she said. "You sound like you again."

→ Read about the Lolita

What changed

I had not been looking for a favourite. I had simply, over the last five years, made a quiet peace with the idea that summer was going to be uncomfortable, and that the way to get through it was to cover up and stay still.

Three things changed that, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. It keeps me cool. The fabric is light and breathable, and on a hot, humid day it lets the air through instead of trapping it against me. I am not standing in the kitchen fanning myself with a tea towel anymore.

2. It does not cling. The A line shape flares gently and skims past the parts of me I have spent years trying to hide, instead of sticking to them the moment I feel warm. That alone took ten years of self consciousness off the morning.

3. It does not make me feel frumpy. There is no slogan, no fuss, just a quiet vertical stripe and a soft shape. It is simple and polished, and it makes me feel dressed rather than hidden. It is also wonderfully easy: a cold machine wash, hang it to dry, and it is ready again.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Lolita for £48.95 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 breezy striped dress like this in the last few years.

• Boden striped dress, £98
• FatFace, £69
• Torquay Lolita, £48.95

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 sat 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 high street that the choice is either a clingy thing built for someone half our age or a shapeless tent. The Lolita is the sensible, lovely middle, and it has been a surprisingly long time since I have found one that kept me cool as well.

I would tell you that the pink is the one I reach for most, the blue is the one Emma took, and the green is the one my neighbour says suits me best. 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 wearing one of them every other warm day anyway.

I would tell you that the popular sizes are already going. When I checked again this morning a couple of the colours were showing as almost sold out. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do, and once they go in your size, that is that.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been quietly dreading the warm months and dressing around the heat, please do not wait through another sticky, frumpy summer.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Susan