A letter from a reader

At 62, I found one dress that did my whole holiday. I barely took it 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 while we were away last week, and when that happens at 62 you start to think there might be something in it.

I have never been any good at packing. I take a whole suitcase and still stand there each evening with nothing that feels right. The cool, comfortable things were fine for wandering about in the heat but far too scruffy for dinner, and the smart things were hot and fussy and needed an iron I never had. So I would spend half the holiday too warm, and the other half feeling I had made no effort at all.

I had decided that cool, comfortable, and pretty enough for the evening were three things that simply never came in one dress.

So I overpacked, wore half of it, and felt wrong in most of it.

Then I saw it on a friend

A friend of mine wore one all day at a garden lunch and still looked cool and lovely by the evening, and 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 Zita, a soft blue and white floral one, and it comes in five colours. I ordered it that same evening before I could talk myself out of it.

What happened on holiday

I wore it out for the day, expecting to change before dinner as always, and I simply never did. Instead, three separate women came over across the week to ask me where it was from. Three. My friend Sue said I looked cool and lovely in the heat, which felt like a small miracle, and I realised I had stopped thinking about what I was wearing altogether.

That was the moment it clicked for me. I had spent years believing you had to choose between comfortable and lovely, and here was a dress that quietly did both, from breakfast to the last drink of the evening.

Three things I have learned since

One. Airy really is cooler. The fabric is so light and breezy that I forgot I had it on, even in the heat of the afternoon. No sticking, no wilting, no counting down to a cool room.

Two. It floats, it does not cling. The flowing cut drapes over me instead of gripping, so I felt comfortable and covered without a thing held in, and it never once creased in the case.

Three. It quietly turns elegant for the evening. With a pair of sandals it is easy daywear, and with a bit of gold and a nicer shoe it is perfectly lovely for dinner. One dress, the whole day.

About the price

I will be honest, when I saw how little it was I was a bit suspicious. A floaty floral dress that does all this usually costs a great deal more.

The Zita is £29.95. It was £60.00.

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 pink. 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 took two on holiday and wore nothing else the whole fortnight." 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 you have a warm week coming up, or a holiday, and the thought of packing already has you tired, because nothing you own is both cool enough for the day and nice enough for the evening, 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 getting dressed on a hot morning and feeling comfortable and like yourself all day, that I had quietly 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 for a second colour. And once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

I have not overpacked a case since.

Caroline