One Outfit, No Thinking: The Set I Packed For Our Fortieth

A note from a reader about the small New Zealand boutique two piece she wore on the ferry, to dinner and to breakfast, and the end of standing in front of a hotel wardrobe.

Graeme and I had our fortieth anniversary in October, and we did what we said we would do forty years ago and never had, which was the ferry to Waiheke and two nights somewhere with a view.

I am 64. I packed for two nights the way I have always packed, which is for nine, and then I stood in front of the hotel wardrobe on the first evening in my dressing gown while Graeme waited in the corridor, and I thought, I have done this at every dinner of my adult life.

Maureen from my walking group had worn a set to the Saturday market the week before, a soft collared top and wide pants in the same colour, from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Amelita. She said, it is one outfit, you put it on, there is no thinking. I had ordered one and packed it, and that night, out of sheer tiredness, I put it on.

What it is

It is a two piece in the same soft fabric. The top has a V neck with a polo style collar, so it reads as a shirt rather than a tee, and short sleeves with a neat cuff that stop where the top of the arm is widest and cover it. The hem sits a little longer at the back. The pants are wide in the leg, with a drawstring waist that you tie where you like and two real side pockets. The fabric is light, soft, and has a little stretch in it, and it comes out of a bag without a crease.

But I want to be honest about the part that actually mattered to me.

It is one decision, and it is the right one every time.

That is the whole thing. The collar and the V make the top, the wide leg makes the pants, and together they look like an outfit somebody planned. Nobody planned it. I put it on in four seconds and walked out past Graeme and he said, oh, that is nice, which from a surveyor is a speech.

The apricot, which is nearly cream, on the morning of the second day. Same set as dinner, nobody could tell.

Dinner, the ferry home and breakfast at the bach, all in one set. I did not open the suitcase again.

The dinner

Dinner was outside, a long table, the kind of warm evening that turns muggy about the main course. The woman beside me, about my age, down from Auckland, looked at the collar and then at the pants and said, is that a set, and when I said yes she said, I have been looking for exactly that for two years.

She wrote the name down on her phone. Graeme watched her do it and raised an eyebrow at me across the table, which after forty years is the same as applause.

"Is that a set?" she asked. "Where have you been hiding it?"

→ Read about the Amelita

What changed in three weeks

Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The layer is the outfit. I have spent years building outfits out of a top, a layer over it and trousers underneath, and then being too warm in the layer. The collar does the job of the layer, so there is nothing to take off at the table.

2. The drawstring is the fit. I tie it where I am comfortable after lunch, not before. The pants sit at the waist, the top sits over them, and the longer back on the top covers what I have always wanted covered when I sit down.

3. It packs small and comes out flat. I rolled it into the corner of the bag for Waiheke. No iron, no steam, no hanging it in the bathroom while the shower runs.

It washes in the machine and dries overnight, and I have since worn the top on its own with jeans to the library and the pants on their own with the coral Zamma top to book club, so it is three outfits really, but the point is that it is one.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. A whole outfit for $133.95 is, frankly, suspicious. So I sat at the kitchen bench and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a top and wide pants like these in the last couple of years.

• Trelise Cooper top and pants, bought separately, $289
• Ricochet, $219
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Amelita, the two pieces, $133.95

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. …how??

What I'd tell you if we were friends

If we were on my back deck with a cuppa and you asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that women our age have spent years being told to layer, and that most of us have been too warm for most of it. The Amelita is one layer that looks like two. There is a difference, and you feel it the second it is on.

I would tell you the apricot is the one I reach for most, the navy is the one Anna says suits me best, and the grey blue is the one I bought for the next trip. The sizes run XS to 3XL and the cut is the same all the way up. I would tell you to buy two, because if you buy two the stack discount comes off, and you will pack them both anyway.

Free NZ Post delivery, usually seven to ten working days, thirty days to change your mind, and a real person called Susan answers the emails, which is how I found out that the pants have pockets before it arrived.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been standing in front of a wardrobe in a dressing gown while somebody waits in the corridor, please do not wait.

— Wendy