A letter from a reader

At 62, I dreaded every dinner invitation. I never had a thing to wear.

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 dinner on Saturday, and when that happens at 62 you start to think there might be something in it.

The truth is, an invitation to anything smart used to fill me with quiet dread. I would stand in front of the wardrobe the night before with nothing that felt right. The smart things were stiff and unforgiving and I spent the whole evening holding myself in, and the comfortable things were fine for the house but nowhere near nice enough to be seen out in. More than once I very nearly made an excuse and stayed home.

I had decided that looking the part and feeling comfortable were two things you simply could not have in the same dress.

So I dreaded the invitations, and wore the same tired thing to all of them.

Then I saw it on a friend

A friend of mine wore one to a dinner and looked so elegant, and yet so completely at ease, that I had to ask. It is from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years, and they had their summer sale on. Mine is the Pamela, an elegant black one with a soft gold swirl running through it. I ordered it that same evening before I could talk myself out of it.

What happened at the dinner

I wore it to the dinner half expecting to spend the evening tugging and shifting as usual. Instead, three separate women came over to ask me where it was from. Three. My friend Sue said I looked a picture and asked if it was new, and I was rather pleased to be able to say that it was, and to leave it at that.

That was the moment it clicked for me. I had spent years believing you had to suffer a little to look nice, and here was a dress that quietly did away with the suffering.

Three things I have learned since

One. Black and a bit of gold looks expensive. The black is quietly slimming and forgiving, and the gold swirl catches the light so the whole thing looks like it cost a great deal more than it did. Nobody would ever guess the price.

Two. Chiffon floats, it does not cling. The soft layer drifts over me rather than gripping, so I felt covered and comfortable, and I could sit down and eat my dinner without a second thought.

Three. It goes anywhere smart. A dinner, a lunch, a christening, a night at the theatre. It has quietly become the thing I reach for whenever I want to look like I have made an effort.

About the price

I will be honest, when I saw how little it was I was a bit suspicious. A dress that looks this elegant usually has a price to match.

The Pamela is £29.95. It was £60.00.

There was no catch. It arrived quickly, it does not crease, it goes straight in the machine, and it looked exactly like the picture, which we all know is not always the way.

I did go and read the reviews first. 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, "It is the only smart dress I own that I can actually sit down and eat in." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If there is an invitation sitting on your mantelpiece that you are quietly dreading, not because of the evening but because of the standing in front of the wardrobe with nothing that both fits and feels like you, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking into a room feeling comfortable and quietly pleased with how you look, that I had given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes go first, which I found out because the one I wanted had sold out by the time I went back to order a second. And once the stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

I have not made an excuse to stay home since.

Caroline