A letter from a reader

At 62, I had given up on shirts because every one gaped between the buttons

I have never written to a shop before, and I did not expect my first letter to be about a shirt.

I love a shirt. I wore them to work for thirty years. But somewhere along the way my figure changed and the shirts did not, and every one I tried started to gape between the buttons across my chest. That little gap at the second and third button, where you can see straight through to your vest. I tried a safety pin. I tried a cardigan over the top all day. I tried going up two sizes, and then the shoulders came halfway down my arms and I looked like I had borrowed it from my husband.

It was not the shirts that had stopped fitting me. It was me that had stopped fitting the shirts.

So I gave up on them, and lived in jumpers and T-shirts, and missed looking crisp.

Then I saw it on a friend at book club

Joan is built very like me, and she came in wearing a soft pink gingham shirt, buttoned up, sitting perfectly flat across the front with not a single gap. She reached right across the table for the biscuits and it did not pull. I asked her outright. She told me it was the Berinda, from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It is cut with room through the bust and the arms, she said, so it does not have to strain. I ordered mine that evening.

What happened at Sunday lunch

I wore it to my sister's for Sunday lunch, buttoned up with my jeans, and I did not put a cardigan over it once. Three different women asked me about it before the pudding, and my friend Sue told me I looked like I had made an effort, which I have decided to take as a compliment. I kept looking down at the buttons, waiting for the gap. It never came.

It is a small thing, a shirt that sits flat. After all those years with a safety pin, it did not feel small at all.

Three things I have learned since

One. Room in the right places. It is a relaxed cut, easy through the bust and the arms, but the collar and shoulders still fit, so it looks like a proper shirt and not a borrowed one. They even list the bust measurement each size fits, so you can check yours before you order.

Two. It moves with you. I can reach across the table, carry the shopping in and lift the grandchildren without the front pulling open. That is the test I used to fail every single time.

Three. The little gingham is kind. It is a small, soft check, so it looks fresh and pretty without being loud, and the curved hem looks just as nice worn loose over jeans as tucked in.

About the price

I had assumed a shirt cut properly for women our shape would be the price of a department store blouse, and the department store blouses never fitted anyway.

The Berinda is £29.95. It was £60.

There is no catch. They have their autumn sale on and delivery is free. Mine is the pink, and it comes in eight colours, from coral, lemon and beige to sage green, blue, black and a lovely burgundy, from a UK 8/10 right up to a UK 22/24.

I did go and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some sites, which if I am honest made me trust it more. One woman had written, "The first shirt in ten years I have not had to wear a vest under." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you came round and we sat out on the porch with a cup of tea, this is what I would tell you.

If you have given up on shirts because of that gap between the buttons, it is not your shape that is wrong. It is the cut. Most shirts are made for a figure none of us have had since we were thirty. Find one that is made with room, and you can be crisp again.

It does not look like it was made for somebody half my age, and it does not look like I have given up either.

Caroline