The Top I Reach For Without Even Thinking About It Anymore

A note from a reader about the easy everyday top from a small New Zealand boutique that finally solved the one thing she never had: something simple that still looks pulled-together.

For most of the last ten years I have not owned a single top I could put on without thinking about it.

That sounds like a small complaint. It is not, when it happens every single morning.

Here is what my mornings used to look like. I would open the wardrobe, and there would be the tops that cling, which I will not wear past about nine in the morning because they show every single thing. There would be the tops that ride up, the ones I spend the whole day quietly tugging back down at the waist. There would be the loose ones I bought to escape the first two, which turned out to be so shapeless I looked like I had given up. And there would be the two or three nice blouses I save for when my daughter Anna visits, which are far too fussy to wear to the store.

So I would stand there, sixty four years old, and I would put on the same tired tunic over leggings, because it was the only thing that did not require a decision. Again.

Three weeks ago a top arrived that broke that pattern, and I have not really stopped wearing it since. It is called the Fayo, and it comes from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique that I had never heard of until a neighbour of mine mentioned them. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age, I think you have been quietly looking for it too.

What it actually is

It is an easy, lightweight everyday top. Breezy is the word the boutique uses for it, and breezy is exactly right. It is cut to skim the body instead of grip it, so it gives you a shape without holding onto anything you would rather it did not.

That one difference is the whole thing for me.

It does not cling. I can wear it through a hot Rotorua afternoon and it stays light and cool against me instead of turning into a second skin by lunchtime. And it does not ride up. I can lift Bruce, our little rescue terrier cross, up onto the deck chair, reach into the top cupboard, load the dishwasher, and the hem stays where it is supposed to. I am not standing in front of a store window pulling at my own waist anymore.

It is the first top in years that I put on and then simply forget I am wearing.

And here is the part I did not expect. It looks like I tried.

That is the thing nobody makes for us. Easy usually means shapeless, and pulled-together usually means fussy and warm and uncomfortable. The Fayo is the first thing I have found that is genuinely easy to wear and still looks like I put thought into getting dressed. I have worn it to the market, to a doctor's appointment, and to a long lunch with my sister, and I did not change a thing in between.

Two of them folded on the dresser now. I reach for one without thinking.

Anna noticed

After the second week my daughter Anna, who is thirty eight and lives in Auckland, called me.

She said, "Mum, you look really put-together in your photos lately. Did you get something new?"

I told her I had had one top, and that I had been wearing it about every other day.

She laughed and said she could not tell, which is the whole point. It does not announce itself. There is no loud print, no slogan, no fussy detail to date it. It is just a quiet, comfortable everyday top in a soft colour, and it makes me look like the version of myself that has her act together.

"Honestly, Mum," she said, "you just look like you, on a good day."

She ordered her own that night. She got hers in the blue.

→ Read about the Fayo

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking for a uniform. I had just been quietly dreading getting dressed, the small daily friction of opening a wardrobe full of clothes and finding nothing in it that worked.

The Fayo took the decision out of the morning. Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. It is genuinely cool to wear. It is light and breezy enough that I stop thinking about the heat, which at my age and in this state is no small thing.

2. It skims, it does not cling. It gives me a flattering line without gripping anything, and it does not ride up no matter how much reaching and bending the day asks of me.

3. It works for everything. Dressed down for the store, a little dressed up for dinner, and I am not changing in between. One top, the whole day.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Fayo for $76.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a everyday summer top like this in the last few years.

• Untouched World top, $179
• Max, $79
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Fayo, $76.95

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 had asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that women our age have been quietly handed a bad choice for years now. Either something that clings and shows everything, or something so loose you disappear inside it. The Fayo is the sensible middle, easy and comfortable and still pulled-together, and it has been a long time since I found one.

I would tell you the grey is the one I reach for most, the blue is the one Anna ordered, and the green is the one my sister says suits me best. I would tell you to buy two. The stack discount comes off when you do, and if you are anything like me you will end up living in them anyway.

I would tell you the popular colours are already showing as nearly sold out. Grey and blue were both flagged when I checked again this morning, and they do not run a sale like this often. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, wanted to open your wardrobe in the morning and reach for something with relief instead of a sigh, please do not wait on this one.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Wendy