The Bright Blouse I Was Told Was Too Much For My Age

A note from a reader about the small New Zealand boutique blouse that put colour back near her face, covered her arms, and got her stopped at the flower market twice.

Somewhere around sixty I stopped wearing colour, and nobody told me to. I just did.

You know how it goes. Navy, grey, a bit of white, the safe things that go with everything and say nothing. I told myself it was elegant. The truth is I thought bright prints were for younger women, and every time I tried one on in a shop the mirror seemed to agree.

Three weeks ago a friend from my walking group turned up in a blouse from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Astra, and it is the brightest thing I have seen on a woman our age in years. She looked wonderful. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age you may have quietly packed the colour away too.

What it is

It is a relaxed shirt blouse in a soft painterly print. A proper collar, small buttons down the front, and long sleeves that roll to the elbow and stay there. The body is cut loose and falls straight past the middle, finishing in a gently curved hem that sits over trousers or jeans. The prints are bold but soft at the edges, big blooms in orange and pink and blue, a green botanical, a pink watercolour, a white with soft petals.

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

It puts colour next to my face, and it does not cling anywhere.

That is the whole thing. The loose cut floats past my middle, the sleeves cover the tops of my arms, and the print does something I had forgotten a print could do. It makes me look awake. I put it on in the bedroom, turned to the mirror braced for the usual verdict, and the mirror had nothing to say.

The flower market on Saturday, in the multicolour. Stopped twice before the daffodils.

Navy said nothing for ten years. This says something, and it turns out I like what it says.

The flower market

The third time I wore it was the Saturday flower market with my daughter Anna, down from Auckland for the weekend, and my granddaughter Olive choosing daffodils.

A woman at the first stall, about my age, looked at the blouse and said, oh, that is lovely, where is it from. Two stalls later another one asked the same thing. Anna looked at me and said, Mum, you have been wearing navy since Dad's sixtieth. What happened?

What happened is that a friend was right, and I had been wrong about colour for a decade.

"You look awake," Anna said. "That is the only way I can put it. You look awake."

→ Read about the Astra

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking to feel pretty. By a certain age you quietly lower that bar to comfortable, and then again to covered. What surprised me about the Astra is that it gave me all three and handed the colour back as well.

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

1. The cut does the work. Loose from the shoulder, straight past the middle, curved at the hem. It skims. I stopped thinking about my stomach the moment it was on.

2. The sleeves stay rolled. Rolled to the elbow they cover the top of the arm and stay put through the dishes, the garden and a long lunch. Down, they are a proper shirt sleeve for the evening.

3. The print is kind. Big, soft blooms keep the eye moving across the whole blouse instead of settling on any one part of me. I have learned, late, that a bright print can be more forgiving than navy.

It is light enough that I have worn it through real New Zealand heat without wilting, and it has the kind of easy shape that lets me kneel in the garden, reach for the top shelf, and bend down for Bruce, our little rescue terrier cross, without anything pulling.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Astra for $84.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a printed shirt blouse like this in the last couple of years.

• Trelise Cooper print blouse, $169
• Ricochet, $119
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Astra, $84.95

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 cold drink 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 quietly taught that colour is for the young and navy is for us. The Astra is not loud. It is a soft, painterly print on a relaxed shirt that happens to be cut so it skims the part of you that you have stopped wanting to see, and it puts colour back where people look, next to your face.

I would tell you the multicolour is the one I reach for most, the orange floral is the one Anna says suits me best, and the green botanical is the one I bought for the quiet days. I would tell you to buy two. If you buy two the stack discount comes off, and you will live in them anyway.

I would tell you that the pink and the white are already showing as almost gone, and the popular sizes in the multicolour are low. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been reaching for the navy so nobody looks twice, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Wendy