A letter from a reader

At 62, I had stopped wearing dresses in the heat. Now I do not want to take this one off.

I almost did not write this down, because it is only a dress and I am not the sort of woman who gets excited about clothes any more. But three different people stopped to ask me about it at a lunch on Saturday, and when that happens at 62 you start to think there might be something in it.

For years I had quietly given up on summer. When it got hot I did not feel free, I felt caught out. Everything either clung in the places I would rather it did not, or it was so loose and shapeless that I looked like I had stopped trying altogether. So I did what a lot of us do. I put on the same dark trousers and a loose top, stayed in the shade, and let the younger women wear the pretty things.

I had decided the choice was cool and frumpy, or presentable and boiling. I did not think you were allowed both.

So I gave up on looking forward to warm days. I just got through them.

Then I saw it on a friend at a summer lunch

A friend of mine turned up to a garden lunch in early July looking cool and put together while the rest of us wilted, and I could not stop looking at her dress. She told me it was from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years, and that they had their summer sale on. It is a soft dusty blue with a fine white coral print, sleeveless, and it comes in a whole row of other prints too. I ordered mine that same evening before I could talk myself out of it.

What happened at the garden lunch

I wore it to a garden lunch the next weekend, half expecting to feel overdressed. Instead, three separate women came over to ask me where it was from. Three. My friend Sue looked me up and down and said I looked like I had made an effort, which coming from Sue I have decided to take as a compliment. What none of them realised was that it was the coolest and most comfortable thing I had on all day.

That was the moment it clicked for me. I had spent years believing I had to choose between being comfortable and looking like myself, and here was a dress that quietly did both.

Three things I have learned since

One. Light really does beat loose. The trick was never buying something bigger and baggier. It was the fabric. This is light and it moves in the warmth, so I am cool without hiding inside a tent.

Two. The pockets change everything. There are proper deep pockets in the side seams, so I am not gripping a handbag all afternoon. I did not think something so small would matter this much, and it does.

Three. The right blue is a tonic. After years of navy and black, a soft coastal blue with a little print made me feel like I had come back to life a bit. It is colour, but it is calm colour. Nobody could call it loud.

About the price

I will be honest, when I saw how little it was I was a bit suspicious. You expect to pay for something that fits and lasts, and this did not cost much at all.

The dress is £29.95. It was £60.00.

There was no catch. It arrived quickly, it washed beautifully, and it looked exactly like the picture, which we all know is not always the way.

I did go and read the reviews before I ordered a second one in another print. 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, "First summer in years I have not spent every hot day hiding indoors in something shapeless." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were sitting across from me with a cup of tea, I would not give you a sales pitch. I would just say that I spent too many summers feeling hot and covered up and a little bit invisible, and it turned out the fix was smaller and cheaper than I expected.

Order your usual size, pick the print that makes you smile, and wear it somewhere nice while the weather holds.

It is the rarest kind of summer dress. The one that keeps you cool and still makes you feel like yourself.

Caroline