Sleeves That Cover My Arms And Still Let The Air Through

A note from a reader about the small New Zealand boutique blouse that ended twenty years of cardigans in the heat, without a single clingy sleeve.

Somewhere in my fifties I stopped buying anything without sleeves, and started carrying a cardigan through the hottest months of the year.

You know the routine. Sleeveless top, cardigan over the arms, cardigan off in the car, cardigan back on at the table because someone is taking a photo. I told myself it was a style. The truth is I did not want anyone looking at the tops of my arms, and every sleeve I owned was either a tee or a sweat.

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 Harper. I asked her about it before we had walked a hundred metres. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age you may have a cardigan on the back of your chair right now.

What it is

It is a loose, easy blouse 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 running down each one is a band of open lace, a pretty geometric pattern 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.

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

The sleeves cover my arms, and the air still moves through them.

That is the whole thing. The lace panels let the breeze in, so I am covered from the shoulder to below the elbow and I am not hot. I put it on in the bedroom, lifted my arms in the mirror the way I always check, and for the first time in years there was nothing to check.

The white one on the deck this morning. You can see the light through the sleeves.

I did not take a cardigan to lunch. I did not even think about it until I was home.

The lunch

The fourth time I wore it was a long lunch for a friend's seventieth, outside, in the kind of heat where I would normally have the cardigan on and off a dozen times.

My daughter Anna was there with Olive, and halfway through she leaned over and said, quietly, you have not fiddled with a cardigan once. I looked down. She was right. I had my arms on the table like everyone else.

She took a photo of Olive on my lap and I did not turn away from it. I looked like myself, comfortable, covered, and not the slightest bit hot.

"You have not fiddled with a cardigan once," Anna said. "Where did that come from?"

→ Read about the Harper

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 Harper is that it gave me all three without me choosing.

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

1. The sleeves are the point. Covered from the shoulder to below the elbow, and the open lace lets the air straight through. I have retired the cardigan from the back of the chair.

2. The cut skims. Loose through the body, so it floats past the middle instead of holding it, and the curved hem sits nicely over everything I already own.

3. It looks like I tried. The tie and the tassels and the lace make it a proper blouse. Jeans for the market, white trousers for lunch, and nobody can tell it took four seconds.

It is light enough for real New Zealand heat, and it has the kind of easy shape that lets me kneel in the garden, reach up to 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 Harper for $88.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen 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??

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 covering your arms means being hot. The Harper is the first top I have owned that proves that wrong. It is covered, it is pretty, and the air moves through it. There is a difference, and you feel it the second it is on.

I would tell you the white is the one I reach for most, the yellow is the one Anna says suits me best, and the black is the one I bought for dinners. 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 white, the light blue and the grey are already showing as nearly gone in the popular sizes. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been carrying a cardigan through summer so nobody looks at your arms, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Wendy