The Top I Reach For Without Even Thinking. My Daughter Asked How I Always Look So Pulled Together Now.

A note from a reader about the small Devon boutique top that finally gave her something easy to wear that still looks like she made an effort.

I am 61 years old, and for years I have not had a single top I could put on without having to think about it.

That sounds like a small complaint. It is not, when it happens every morning.

Here is what the mornings used to look like. I would open the wardrobe, and I would have two kinds of tops. There were the comfortable ones, the soft jersey ones that I could move in, that clung to every part of me I have stopped wanting to advertise, and rode up over my middle every time I lifted my arms to hang the washing. And then there were the smarter ones, the blouses, the ones that looked lovely on the hanger and felt like wearing a parcel, too fitted, too fussy, too much for a Tuesday.

So I had comfortable, or I had presentable. I almost never had both. And most days, if I am honest, I gave up and reached for the same tired tunic over leggings, and then caught sight of myself in the hall mirror on the way out and thought, oh.

Three weeks ago a friend of mine, a neighbour really, mentioned a top she had bought from a small coastal boutique called Torquay Boutique. It is called the Fayo. I want to tell you what it is, because I think if you are a woman my age you have been quietly looking for it for a long time.

What it is

It is a light, breezy everyday top. Not jersey, not a stiff blouse, something in between. It has a tailored cut, the boutique calls it, but I would describe it more plainly. It has a proper shape to it. It gently skims rather than clings, which at 61 is the entire difference between a top I will wear and a top that goes back in the drawer.

It is genuinely light. The boutique describes it as lightweight and breezy, and that is the honest word for it. On the first really warm afternoon we have had this year I wore it to walk into town and back, and I did not once feel that damp, sticky, peel-it-off feeling I have come to dread in summer tops. It breathes. And it is just as easy on a cooler evening with a cardigan over the top.

But the thing I keep coming back to is simpler than any of that.

I can put it on without thinking, and it still looks like I made an effort.

That is the whole thing. That is what I have been missing for years and could not name. A top that does not ride up, does not cling, does not need fussing with in front of the mirror, and yet I can answer the door in it, walk to the shops in it, meet a friend for lunch in it, and not feel like I have given up.

Two of them folded on the dresser now. I reach for one without thinking.

Emma noticed

My daughter Emma, who is thirty four and lives in London, came down for the weekend a fortnight ago.

On the Sunday, as she was packing up to drive back, she stopped in the kitchen and looked at me for a second, the way she does, and said, "Mum, you look really nice lately. You always look sort of pulled together now. What have you changed?"

I told her I had not changed anything. I had just stopped fighting with my clothes in the morning.

She did not understand what I meant, so I showed her the top. She felt the fabric, held it up, and asked me where it had come from. I told her. She ordered her own that evening, sitting at my kitchen table, and she ordered a second one in a different colour before she had even tried the first.

"This is exactly the thing I can never find," she said. "Easy, but not frumpy. Why is that so hard?"

→ Read about the Fayo

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking for a favourite top. I had simply, over the last few years, made my peace with the idea that getting dressed in the morning was going to be a small daily defeat.

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 gently skims the parts of me I would rather not have outlined, and it stays where I put it. I can reach up to a high shelf or carry the washing basket and it does not ride up over my middle.

2. It does not feel like a parcel. The smart tops I owned always felt fitted in a way that made me hold my breath. This one has a carefree, relaxed feel and a real shape at the same time, which I genuinely did not think existed.

3. It is the same effort, and a completely different result. Putting it on is no harder than reaching for the old tunic. But I leave the house feeling dressed, and that one small thing has quietly changed how the rest of my day feels.

I have it in two colours now. The grey is the one I wear the most, almost without noticing, and the blue is the one my neighbour says suits me best. There is a green and a purple as well, and I will be honest, I am eyeing the green.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Fayo for £43.95 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 everyday summer top like this in the last few years.

• White Stuff top, £55
• Seasalt, £49.95
• Torquay Fayo, £43.95

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 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 comfortable or presentable, and that we are not allowed to have both. The Fayo is the small, sensible, joyful proof that we can, and it has been a surprisingly long time since I have found one.

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. The grey for the ordinary days, a colour for the days you want to feel a little more like yourself.

I would tell you that the popular sizes are already going. When I checked again this morning a couple of them were flagged as nearly gone. The sale price holds while the sizes do, and once a size sells through it is the full price or nothing, which is rather the point of telling you now rather than next week.

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

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Susan