A letter from a reader

At 62, I finally found colour I can actually wear

I have never written to a shop before, and I did not expect my first letter to be about a zip-neck top.

Here is the truth of it. Everyone tells women our age to wear more colour. My daughter says it, the magazines say it, the woman in the shop says it while holding up something the colour of a postbox. And every time I have tried, I have stood in the changing room feeling like I was standing on a table shouting. So I put it back, bought the grey one, and went home feeling both sensible and a bit flat.

It was not that I did not want colour. It was that all the colour on offer came in one enormous dose.

So I stayed in grey and navy, and told myself it was classic, which is what we all say.

Then I saw it on a friend at the garden centre

My friend Pauline met me for a coffee in a soft grey zip-neck top with a band of thin rainbow stripes across the front. The first thing I noticed was that I noticed her, and the second was that it was not loud at all. Most of it is plain grey. The colour is in the stripes, and the stripes are narrow. I asked her where it was from before we had even sat down. She told me it was the Medline, from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered mine that evening.

What happened at the garden centre

I wore it the following Saturday with my jeans, for a wander round the plants and a coffee afterwards. Three different women asked me where it was from, and my friend Sue told me I looked like I had made an effort, which I have decided to take as a compliment.

What I kept thinking about on the way home was how little I had done. I had put on a grey top. It just happened to have eight colours on it, in stripes narrow enough that I never once felt conspicuous.

Three things I have learned since

One. The grey is doing the work. The shoulders are plain and the hem is plain, so the colour sits in one band across the middle. That is why it reads as cheerful rather than bright.

Two. Thin stripes are kinder than a block. A whole jumper in one strong colour puts that colour right up under your chin. A narrow stripe gives you the same lift in a fraction of the dose.

Three. The zip is more useful than it looks. A short zip at the collar, so you can open it in a warm shop and pull it up in the car park, and it changes the shape at the neck when you do.

About the price

When I saw the price I was suspicious. Something this soft, I assumed, would either cost a small fortune or go bobbly after two washes.

The Medline is £31.95. It was £64.

There is no catch. They have their autumn sale on, delivery is free, and it arrived looking exactly as it did in the pictures.

I did go and read the reviews before I ordered a second one. 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, "I cannot wear bright colours, they wear me. This is the first colourful thing I have bought in years and I have worn it twice this week." 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.

You are not dull and you are not afraid of colour. You simply do not want to be a traffic light. Start with a stripe, keep the rest of it grey, and see how that feels for a week.

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