I Wanted To Look Put Together Again Without It Taking All Morning. One Dress Fixed That.

A note from a reader about the small Devon boutique dress that, to everyone who sees it, reads as a proper outfit, and feels, to her, like nothing at all.

I am 61 years old, and somewhere in the last few years getting dressed stopped feeling like a pleasure and started feeling like work.

Nobody warns you about that part. You do not notice the day it happens. You only notice, one morning, that you are standing in front of an open wardrobe at half past eight, already a little tired, holding up one thing and then another and putting all of it back.

I did not want to look young. I did not want to look fashionable. I just wanted to look like myself again, the put together version, the one who used to walk into the room and not think about her clothes for the rest of the day. And I wanted that without it costing me the whole morning and most of my patience.

The dress that gave me that back is called the Cassandra. 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 about it, because I think if you are a woman my age you have been quietly looking for exactly this for longer than you would admit.

What it is

It is a cotton midi dress. A soft, breathable cotton, light enough to wear on a warm day without thinking about it. A classic round neckline. A relaxed, loose shape through the body and a flowing skirt that moves when you walk and settles when you stand still. It skims. It does not cling, and it does not hang off you like a sack either.

That sounds like a small thing on paper. It is not a small thing when you put it on.

Because here is what actually happens when I wear it. People think I have made an effort. They tell me I look lovely, they ask if I am off somewhere nice, and the honest answer is that I pulled one thing over my head and was out of the door in four seconds.

That is the whole trick of it, and I did not expect it. It reads, to everyone who sees me, as a proper outfit. It feels, to me, like the most comfortable thing I own. There is no part of my day where I am tugging at it, smoothing it down, or wishing I had worn something else.

Out on the porch, the way I actually wear it. Everyone thinks it is two pieces. It is one.

It looks like I tried. It feels like I did not have to.

Emma rang me

After about the second week my daughter Emma, who is thirty four and lives in London, rang me and said, "Mum, you look really well in your photos lately. Have you done something?"

I told her I had not done a single thing. I had simply stopped fighting with my wardrobe in the morning.

She wanted to know what I meant, so I told her about the Cassandra. How it had quietly become the thing I reach for, not because I had decided it should be, but because every other morning I would open the drawer and there it was, and putting it on was the one choice that did not feel like a chore.

"I have not heard you sound this relaxed about getting dressed in years," she said.

She ordered her own that evening. She ordered hers in the blue, and then rang me back a fortnight later to tell me she understood now.

→ Read about the Cassandra

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking for a uniform. I had been quietly carrying around a small daily dread, the kind you do not mention to anyone, about the simple act of getting dressed.

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. The cotton is light enough to breathe on a warm day and has enough weight to hang the way a real summer dress is supposed to, instead of sticking to you the moment it warms up.

2. It does not tent. I have bought what I thought were comfortable dresses before that turned out to be enormous shapeless things. The Cassandra has a relaxed cut with a flowing skirt that skims a real 61 year old body without drowning it.

3. It does the thinking for me. It is one quiet, elegant dress in one solid colour, and it asks nothing of me. I do not have to assemble an outfit around it. I put it on and I am dressed, and I am done thinking about it for the day.

That last one is the one that mattered most. The morning stopped being a negotiation.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Cassandra for £54.95 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 printed midi dress like this in the last few years.

• Boden printed midi, £110
• White Stuff, £69
• Torquay Cassandra, £54.95

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 whole high street that the choice is either a tent or something built for someone half our age. The Cassandra is the sensible, lovely middle, and it has been a surprisingly long time since I found one that looked like an outfit and felt like nothing.

I would tell you that the black is the one I wear the most, the green is the one my sister says suits me best, and the blue is the one Emma took. I would tell you to buy two, because if you buy two the stack discount comes off, and because you will end up reaching for one of them every other day anyway, exactly as I did.

I would tell you that the popular sizes are already showing as almost gone. The middle sizes in black were flagged as low when I checked again this morning. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do, not a tidy date on a calendar, so I would not leave it.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been opening your wardrobe in the morning with resignation instead of relief, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Susan