Olive Laid Out Twenty Two Christmas Photos On My Kitchen Table. I Was In Black In Every One.

A note from a reader whose granddaughter asked one question about the family Christmas photos, and the small New Zealand boutique dress that will be on the front steps this year instead.

Olive stayed with us the first weekend of November. She is seven, she does not believe in waiting for December, and by Saturday morning she had found the old shortbread tin in the hall cupboard where I keep the Christmas photos.

Every Christmas since 2004, Graeme has taken one photo of the whole family on the front steps of whoever is hosting. He props the camera on the letterbox, sets the timer and runs. Twenty two Christmases, twenty two prints, all in the one tin.

Olive laid them out on the kitchen table in rows, oldest at the top, the way I taught her to shelve picture books. Then she looked at them for a long time and put her finger on me in each one.

"Nana, why are you always in black?"

The tin, emptied onto the kitchen table. Black, navy, black, black. Olive counted.

Twenty two Christmases

I am 64, and I had my reasons ready, because I have been giving them to myself for twenty years. Black goes with everything. Black does not show the gravy. Nobody looks twice at a woman in black, which at the time I thought was the point.

Olive was not interested in my reasons. She was counting. Black, navy, black, a black top with a black cardigan over it in a year that was 29 degrees. In the 2011 photo everyone else is in shorts and jandals and I look like I have come from a funeral and stayed for the pavlova.

"You should wear the colour of the sea," she said, and went back to her colouring in.

I did the dishes and thought about that for longer than I would like to admit.

What I found

That night, after Olive was asleep, I went looking. Not for black. I had a feeling I would know the right thing when I saw it, the way you know a good book from the first page, and I did.

It is a dress from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Sapphire. A midi in a soft blue mosaic print, blues and turquoise and green with little flecks of copper and gold through it, so it looks like the harbour on a bright afternoon. Olive's sea, more or less.

A V neck that crosses over at the front and sits where a V should sit. Short flutter sleeves that cover the top of the arm and move when I do. A waist gathered softly, so there is a shape without anything holding on, and a skirt that falls loose and light to below the knee, with a hem that dips a little lower at the back.

It comes in one colour. I liked that. Nobody was going to let me choose navy.

The trial run

It came on a Thursday by NZ Post, eight working days, tracked, with a little handwritten card from Eleanor, who owns the boutique. I did not save it for December. On the Saturday, Graeme's bowls club had their Christmas lunch, early as always, because half the club disappears to the bach once December starts.

Before we left, Graeme took a photo of me on our front steps, by the wreath Olive had made me put up a month early. Practice, he said, for the twenty fifth.

On our front steps before the bowls club lunch. Graeme's practice photo, and the first one in twenty two years with no black in it.

The first Christmas photo in twenty two years with no black in it.

I sent it to Anna. Ten minutes later there was a voice message from Olive, very close to the phone. "Nana, you're the sea."

At the club it was 26 degrees on the verandah and the lunch went on, the way club lunches do. I wrote down afterwards what I noticed, because I wanted to be sure I was not just pleased with myself.

1. I did not spend lunch with a napkin over my lap. The print is busy enough to forgive a lunch, which is the only thing I ever liked about black.

2. The waist left me alone. Two hours on a plastic chair, a plate of ham and new potatoes and a bowl of trifle, and I did not once reach to loosen anything.

3. My arms were covered and I was not hot. The flutter sleeves sit over the top of the arm and let the air in underneath. I did not take a cardigan. I did not miss it.

4. People talked to me. I had forgotten that colour does that. Three of the bowls wives asked where it was from, and Jan from two doors down asked if I had been somewhere nice. I had. Lunch.

The bowls club Christmas lunch. 26 degrees on the verandah and no cardigan.

→ Read about the Sapphire

Now, about the price

I will be honest, I expected a dress like this to cost what the dresses in the window in town cost. I wrote it on the back of my bowls club raffle ticket.

• The occasion dress in the window in town, $289
• The black dress I bought for Christmas 2019, $149
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Sapphire, $99.95

Underneath I wrote …how?? and put the ticket in my purse.

What I'd tell you if we were friends

If we were on my deck with a cuppa and you told me you had a wardrobe full of black for Christmas, this is what I would say.

The black is not wrong. Keep it for the evenings. But on a hot Christmas Day in the sun, with the ham and the pav and the kids in their togs, nobody needs you standing in the back row of the photo.

The Sapphire comes in sizes S to 2XL, one colour, and it is $99.95 in every size. I wrote to ask about my size and a woman called Susan answered the same afternoon. If you pick the wrong one, she will swap it before it goes out. Delivery is free by NZ Post, usually seven to ten working days, so I would not leave it past the first week of December, and you have thirty days to change your mind.

Buy two and the stack discount comes off, 15% on two and up to 30% on more. That is how Christine ended up with one under her tree, though she does not know it yet.

This year the dress is hanging on the wardrobe door with a tag on the hanger that says Dec 25. Lunch is at Anna's in Auckland, in her little courtyard under the umbrella, and Graeme has already asked where her letterbox is.

On the wardrobe door with its tag. The black is still in there. It just is not coming to Auckland.

Twenty three photos in the tin by January. One of them blue.

— Wendy