One Blouse, Ten Days In A Campervan, Every Photo

A note from a reader about the small New Zealand boutique blouse that washed in a van basin at Wanaka, dried on the line by morning, and covered the top of her arm in every photo of the trip.

Graeme and I took a campervan round the South Island for ten days in October, and I packed one blouse for the photos.

I am 64. For most of my life I have packed four tops for a two day trip, because one of them might be wrong and because every single one of them left my upper arms in the photographs. Lake Tekapo, Wanaka, the West Coast, and me at the edge of every picture with a cardigan I did not need or an arm I did not want.

A week before we left, Maureen from my walking group turned up in a blouse from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Harper. I had already written about the lunch I wore it to. This is about what it did in a van, because that is the test, and if you are a woman my age with a trip booked, you will know why.

What it is

A loose, easy blouse in lightweight cotton with a soft V neck and a little tie with two tassels at the front. The sleeves are three quarter length, gently full and gathered at the cuff, and down each one runs a band of open lace that you can see the light through. The body is cut loose and finishes in a soft curved hem that sits over trousers or jeans. White, light blue, black, grey and yellow.

But I want to be honest about the one thing that mattered in that van.

The sleeve covers the top of my arm, and the air still moves through it.

That is the whole thing. One mechanism. The lace panels let the breeze in, so I am covered from the shoulder to below the elbow and I am not hot, in a van with no air conditioning on the Haast road in the sun. I did not take a cardigan out of the bag once in ten days.

The light blue one on the boardwalk on the West Coast. Sleeves on, arms covered, and I was not hot.

Washed in the van basin at Wanaka at nine at night, pegged on the line, dry by seven. Ten days, one blouse.

The basin at Wanaka

The fourth night we were parked up at Wanaka with the lake going pink and the blouse in the little steel basin with a squirt of the dish soap, because that is what you have. I pegged it on the line Graeme strings between the van and whatever tree is nearest, and went to bed sure I had ruined it.

By seven it was dry and it had hung itself straight. No iron in a van, and it did not need one. I put it on, we drove to the Blue Pools, and in the photo of me on the swing bridge my arms are covered and I am smiling, which Graeme says is the first swing bridge photo of me in thirty years where both of those things are true.

At Hokitika a woman at the gorge, about my age, asked me where the blouse was from before she asked where we were from. I told her. She said she had been packing cardigans for forty years.

"Both arms. In a photograph," Graeme said. "On a swing bridge. Who are you."

→ Read about the Harper

What changed in ten days

I had not been looking to feel pretty on a campervan trip. By a certain age you quietly lower that bar to comfortable, and then again to covered. What surprised me about the Harper is that it gave me all three out of a steel basin.

Three things I noticed on the road, and I wrote them down in the van because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The sleeve is the point. Covered from the shoulder to below the elbow, and the open lace lets the air straight through. I was in every photo and I did not look at my arms once.

2. It travels. Rolled in the bag, washed in a basin, dry by morning, and it hangs itself straight. The light blue did the first five days and the white did the last five.

3. It looks like I tried. The tie and the tassels and the lace make it a proper blouse. Jeans in the van, white trousers for the dinner at Queenstown, and nobody could tell it was the same top as the gorge.

It has the kind of easy shape that lets me climb into a van, reach for the bag on the top shelf and bend down for Bruce, our little rescue terrier cross, who came with us and claimed the passenger seat.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Harper for $88.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the little van table and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a lace blouse like this in the last couple of years.

• Trelise Cooper blouse, $189
• Ricochet, $129
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Harper, $88.95

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

Mine came by NZ Post in eight working days, tracked, with a little handwritten card from Eleanor, who owns the boutique, and when I asked about the yellow a woman called Susan answered that afternoon. Say the date you fly and she will tell you plainly whether it will land first.

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 for a trip, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that women our age have spent years being quietly taught that covering your arms means being hot and packing a cardigan. The Harper is the first top I have owned that proves that wrong in a van with no air conditioning. It is covered, it is pretty, and the air moves through it.

I would tell you one honest thing. The white shows a bra line in strong light, so wear a white or a skin coloured bra under it and it looks lovely. The light blue and the grey do not care what you wear underneath.

I would tell you to buy two, one to wear and one on the line, because that is how one blouse does ten days. If you buy two the stack discount comes off anyway. Same cut from S to 5XL, same price in every size.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been the woman at the edge of the holiday photos with a cardigan over her arms, please do not wait.

While your size is still there.

— Wendy