A letter from a reader

Nobody warns you that the hard part of an occasion is the forty minutes before it

I am 66. My granddaughter had her leavers' assembly in July and I spent longer deciding what to wear to it than the assembly lasted. That is not an exaggeration. Monty, who is a border terrier and has strong views about wasted time, went and lay down in the hall with his back to me.

The wardrobe is not empty. That is the annoying part of it. There are dresses in there. Half of them fit beautifully right up until I sit down, and the other half are comfortable and make me look like I have stopped caring what happens next. I had more or less decided this was what my sixties were going to be.

What changed my mind was a woman at the hairdresser's. She was under the dryer next to me in something pale pink that did not look like it was working very hard, and I asked her outright where it had come from. A small shop in Richmond, she said, run by two sisters, Emma and Alison Winslow, who have been at it eleven years. The dress is called the Theodosia. I ordered one on the way home, fully braced to send it back.

It went back nowhere. There is a slub woven through the cloth, so it falls away from you instead of following you about. The sleeves come down to the forearm and are wide enough that I stopped noticing my arms, which after fifteen years of noticing them was a strange afternoon. There is a fabric rose at each cuff and five small flower buttons at the throat, so you can skip the whole business of finding a necklace. Shoes on and out the door.

I got dressed once that morning and then thought about something else all day.

I had braced myself for the price as well. Anything of this sort in a shop window in Guildford starts at a hundred and fifty. They buy in small quantities and were clearing this lot, so it came to £52.95. I read it twice.

The real test was the christening. My sister asked what I had done to myself, and the answer was nothing whatsoever, I had put a dress on. She has since bought one. It comes in the one colour, a soft blush, and the sizes go up to a 22/24, with every measurement listed in centimetres so you can hold it against something already in your wardrobe before you order.

Emma has written her own piece about how they made it, including the argument she had with the supplier over the sleeve. It is here, and worth reading if you like knowing where a thing came from.

If getting ready has turned into more of a job than it ought to be, have a look before the sizes go. It is £52.95 instead of £165 while they clear this lot. The middle sizes tend to go first, which I expect you already knew.