The Top That Is Its Own Outfit

A note from a reader about the printed top from a small New Zealand boutique that ended five years of plain tees, and why she stopped planning outfits at all.

For five years, every top I owned was plain. Navy, black, white, a grey one for the garden. I told myself it was simpler. It was, and it was also very dull.

You will know the habit if you are a woman my age. Somewhere in your late fifties you stop buying prints, because the prints in the shops are either for someone twenty years younger or they shout. So you buy plain, and then you spend ten minutes every morning trying to make plain look like you meant it. A necklace. A scarf. A cardigan over the top to give it some shape. I am 64 and I was still doing it in September.

Then a parcel arrived from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique, with a top inside called the Jael, and I have not planned an outfit since.

Over the cane chair on the verandah the afternoon it arrived. The purple, which is the one I wear most.

What it is

It is a relaxed top in a patchwork print, soft circles over washed colour, with a printed band running across the body, so the pattern does the work a necklace and a scarf used to do. A soft round neck with three small buttons. Sleeves that come to the elbow and cover the top of the arm. A body that falls from the shoulder and skims past the middle without holding it, to hip length, with a gently uneven hem that sits over jeans or trousers and never needs tucking.

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

It looks like a considered piece and it feels like a favourite tee.

That is the whole thing. I put it on with the jeans I was already wearing, looked in the hall mirror on the way out, and did not go back for a necklace. For the first time in five years the top was the outfit.

Laid out the night before book club. Jeans in the morning, white trousers for lunch, same top.

It looks like a considered piece and it feels like a favourite tee. I did not know I was allowed both.

One top, one week

I bought the purple, and in the first week it did the Saturday market, book club on the Tuesday, a gallery morning in town with my sister Christine, and the school pick up for my granddaughter Olive, which is where most of my tops go to be judged.

At book club two of the women asked where it was from before we had opened the book. At the gallery Christine looked at it twice and then asked, which from Christine is practically a request. One of the book club women has since bought the blue. Christine has the red.

And Olive, who is seven and says exactly what she thinks, said the circles looked like planets. I will take planets.

In the garden on the Sunday, after the market and before the roast. Nothing had pulled, nothing had creased.

→ Read about the Jael

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking to feel interesting. By a certain age you quietly lower that bar to presentable. What surprised me about the Jael is that it gave me back the first without asking for any effort.

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

1. The print does the work. Soft circles over washed colour, and a band across the body. It reads as one calm piece from across the room and gets a closer look at the table. I have not reached for a necklace since.

2. It skims the middle. It falls from the shoulder and floats past my stomach on its own, and the hem sits over the hip so there is nothing to tuck and nothing to pull down when I stand up. I stopped thinking about my middle the moment it was on.

3. It goes in the machine. After the market, after the garden, after book club. Out of the machine, onto the hanger, dry by morning, and it does not need the iron. Three wears in a week and it still looked like the first.

The blue, which the woman from book club now owns. Red, grey, purple and blue, same top, same price.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Jael for $76.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a printed top with sleeves in the last couple of years.

• Trelise Cooper printed top, $149
• Ricochet, $109
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Jael, $76.95

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

The other two numbers are not a criticism of those shops. It is that a small boutique that has been on the coast for twenty two years is clearing its collection online as it moves out of the shop, and that is why the price sits where it sits.

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 buying plain because the prints were not made for us, and that the Jael is the first print I have found that was. Soft, washed colour, nothing that shouts. A round neck with three small buttons. Sleeves to the elbow. A hem over the hip. And it feels like a tee.

I would tell you the purple is the one I reach for most, the blue is the one that gets the comments, the red is Christine's and the grey is the one for the days you want the print to whisper. I would tell you to buy two. If you buy two the stack discount comes off, and you will live in them anyway, which is how Christine got hers.

I would tell you that the middle sizes are already showing as low. When I checked again this morning the large in the purple was marked almost sold out. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been standing in front of a wardrobe full of plain tops trying to make one of them interesting, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Wendy