Last Christmas I Spent Lunch Pulling My Top Off My Back. This Year I Sorted It In November.

A note from a reader who cooked Christmas lunch for fourteen on a muggy Bay of Plenty day, and the small New Zealand boutique top she has already put away for this one.

Last Christmas it was our turn. Fourteen of us at our place in Otumoetai. Christine came over from Rotorua with Hannah, Anna and Olive drove down from Auckland, and Graeme's brother brought his lot and a chilly bin of drinks. It was one of those Bay of Plenty Christmas Days that cannot make up its mind, 27 degrees by eleven and muggy as a laundry.

I am 64, and I had bought a new top for the day at the mall on the twenty third, the way you do. A lovely red, stretchy, with a little swing tag that said breathable. The ham on the bone had been in the oven since nine and I had been in the kitchen since seven. By the time Graeme carved, the top was stuck to my back from the shoulders down.

I spent the afternoon at the kitchen bench pulling it away from my skin between my finger and thumb, the way you do, and hoping nobody noticed. In every photo Anna took on the deck I am the one at the back with my arms folded. After everyone had gone I turned the label over. Not a natural thread in it.

The promise I made at the sink

At ten that night Christine was drying and I was washing, and I said it out loud so I could not wriggle out of it. Next year I am sorting it early. Not on the twenty third, not at the mall, not with everyone else in town doing the same thing.

Most years a promise like that is gone by February. This year I wrote it on the calendar on the kitchen wall, on the first of November, two words. Christmas top.

What I found

In October, a few weeks before the calendar caught up with me, I saw a top from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Zamma, and the page said real 100% linen. Not linen look, not linen feel. Linen.

I know what linen does in a warm room. My mother would not have anything else in the house in summer, and she was right about most things. So I ordered two. The coral red for Christmas Day, because it is the colour of a pōhutukawa in full flower, and the white, because I could not choose and Boxing Day at Papamoa needed something too.

The trial run

They came by NZ Post in eight working days, tracked, with a little handwritten card from Eleanor, who owns the boutique. I did not save them for December. On the first muggy Saturday in November I put the white one on and did a trial run.

Oven on at full, a bacon and egg pie for book club, two hours at the bench with the kitchen window fogging up. The exact conditions of last Christmas, give or take a ham.

The white one, out for a walk to the water once the pie was done. Two hours in a hot kitchen and it was still sitting away from my back.

The exact conditions of last Christmas, give or take a ham. It did not stick to my back once.

It did not stick to my back once. I wrote down why, because I wanted to be sure I was not just pleased with myself for planning ahead.

1. It breathes. Real linen lets the air through. In a kitchen with the oven on, that is the whole difference. The top moves when you move and the air gets in underneath it.

2. It skims. The body is loose and falls from the shoulders, so it sits away from the middle and does not hold on anywhere. A soft V that sits about a hand's width below the collarbone, with one button at the base, so it is open but never low. Sleeves to just below the elbow, with a little button tab if you want them rolled for the dishes.

3. It gets softer. Every wash it is a bit softer than the time before. It creases, because it is linen, and I have stopped minding. I hang it on the line and leave it at that.

It comes in six colours. Coral red, green, navy, white, beige and black. The coral is hanging in the wardrobe with a note on the hanger that says do not touch until the twenty fifth, and Graeme has been told.

→ Read about the Zamma

Now, about the price

I will be honest, the price made me suspicious. Real linen is not cheap, and I know what it costs. I wrote it down on the back of the book club list.

• A linen shirt in a smart shop in town, $249
• The red top from the mall that stuck to me, $59, and no linen at all
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Zamma, 100% linen, $68.95

Two of them came to less than the one shirt in town. Underneath I wrote the only thing I could think of. …how??

What I'd tell you if we were friends

If we were on my deck with a cuppa and you asked me whether to order one for Christmas, this is what I would say.

I would tell you not to wait for the twenty third. Everyone in the country is in the same shop that week, and the good colours go first.

I would tell you one fit thing, because a friend would. It runs a touch small through the chest, so go up one size from your usual. I wrote to ask, and a woman called Susan answered the same afternoon and told me plainly to go up one. She was right. It is $68.95 in every size, S to 5XL, and the cut is the same in a 22 as in a 12.

If it is for Christmas, order by Friday 4 December. It comes by NZ Post, free, usually seven to ten working days, and you have thirty days to change your mind. If you pick the wrong size, Susan will swap it before it goes out.

Buy two and the stack discount comes off, 15% on two and up to 30% on more. That is how Christine ended up with the green under her tree, though she does not know it yet. The page says the white, the beige and the green are almost sold out, which is why I am writing this now and not on Boxing Day.

If you have ever spent Christmas afternoon holding a top off your back at the kitchen bench, please do not leave it to the twenty third.

Sort it early. Then put the kettle on.

— Wendy