A letter from a reader

At 62, I had started dressing to hide my middle. Then I found this.

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

The truth is, for a good few years now my middle had quietly become the thing I dressed around. Somewhere after sixty everything I owned seemed to cling to my tummy, and I spent every lunch and every party holding it in, tugging my top down, and turning to the side whenever a camera came out. So I gave up on anything fitted or pretty, and reached for the same loose dark things that I hoped would hide me.

I had decided that anything nice would only cling to the one part of me I most wanted to forget.

So I stopped buying dresses at all, really, and told myself it did not matter.

Then I saw it on a friend

A friend of mine wore one to lunch and looked so comfortable and so 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 Macy, a pretty red floral one, and it comes in four florals. I ordered it that same evening before I could talk myself out of it.

What happened at the garden party

I wore it to a garden party the next weekend, half expecting to spend the afternoon holding myself in as usual. Instead, three separate women came over to ask me where it was from. Three. My friend Sue said I looked lovely and relaxed, which I was, because for the first time in a long while I had stopped thinking about my stomach altogether.

That was the moment it clicked for me. I had spent years believing the fault was mine and my middle's, and here was a simple dress that quietly took the whole worry away.

Three things I have learned since

One. It is the cut, not a bigger size. There are soft pleats down the front that fall away from the body over the tummy, so it skims instead of clinging. I had been buying things baggier for years and only ever looked bigger. This just gently drapes.

Two. It is light, and it has pockets. The fabric is cool and easy with a little stretch, so it moves with me on a warm day, and there are proper discreet pockets, which I did not expect and now would not be without.

Three. A bit of colour brought me back. After years of hiding in dark, shapeless things, a soft floral made me feel feminine again, and nobody was looking at my middle. They were looking at the dress.

About the price

I will be honest, when I saw how little it was I was a bit suspicious. A dress that fits and flatters like this usually costs a great deal more.

The Macy is £26.95. It was £50.00.

There was no catch. It arrived quickly, 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 before I ordered a second one in the yellow. 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 dress in years that I did not spend the whole day holding my tummy in." 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 had spent too long letting my middle decide what I was allowed to wear, and one simple dress quietly gave me the choice back.

Order your usual size, pick the floral that makes you smile, and stop holding your breath.

The sizes are going fast, as the sale is almost nearing an end. It's best to grab yours while there are still some left. 

It is the rarest kind of dress. The one that skims over the bits you would rather forget and still makes you feel like yourself.

Caroline