The Dress With Pockets I Wore Three Times In One Week

A note from a reader about the small New Zealand boutique midi that moves when she walks, never holds on, and has pockets deep enough for the phone and the keys.

For about five years now, every dress in my wardrobe has come with a condition.

This one needs a slip. That one needs a belt. The nice one pulls across the middle if I sit for longer than a coffee, and the comfortable one is a nightie with a print. I told myself that was just what dresses were at my age. The truth is I had stopped believing there was one I could put on and forget.

Three weeks ago my sister Christine wore a dress to lunch in Rotorua that she had ordered from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Zora. I want to tell you about it, because if you are a woman my age you may have the same row of conditions hanging in your wardrobe.

What it is

It is a midi in small white spots on a coloured ground, six colours. A round neck, short sleeves with a soft flutter edge that covers the top of the arm, and three soft tiers that fall from the chest to mid calf. And pockets. Proper side pockets, deep enough for the phone in one and the keys in the other.

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

It moves when I walk and it never holds on anywhere.

That is the whole thing. The tiers fall away from the body instead of following it, so there is nothing across the middle, nothing under the arm, nothing at the back when I sit. I put it on in the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed the way I always test a dress, and nothing pulled.

The brown one, on the way to lunch. The pockets sit in the side seams, where you cannot see them, which is rather the point.

It is the first dress in years that asks nothing of me. No slip, no belt, no holding my breath.

Three wears in one week

I bought the brown one for a lunch, and it has since done a walk along the waterfront with Maureen, a Saturday morning at the farmers market, and a school pick up for my granddaughter Olive, all in the same week.

At the lunch three of the women at the table asked where it was from before the coffee arrived. At the market a woman at the plant stall, about my age, looked at the dress and then at me and said, does that have pockets. It does, I said, and showed her.

Anna laughed at me on the phone. Mum, she said, you have worn the same navy dress to every lunch for five years and now you are the one people stop.

"Does that have pockets," she said. "Because I am buying it if it does."

→ Read about the Zora

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 Zora is that it gave me all three without a compromise.

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

1. The tiers do the work. They fall from the chest and float past the middle on their own. I stopped thinking about my stomach the moment it was on.

2. The pockets. Phone in one, keys in the other, and no bag on the chair to remember when I stand up. I did not know how much I wanted this until I had it.

3. It is genuinely light. The flutter sleeves cover the top of the arm and stop before they can trap any heat, and after a long warm lunch nothing had stuck or creased.

It has the kind of easy shape that lets me kneel in the garden, sit through a long lunch, and bend down for Bruce, our little rescue terrier cross, without the dress fighting me once.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me. The Zora for $86.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a tiered midi like this in the last couple of years.

• Trelise Cooper tiered midi, $249
• Ricochet, $169
• The Mount Coastal Boutique Zora, $86.95

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 accepting that a pretty dress comes with conditions. The Zora is a pretty dress with none. Tiers that move, sleeves that cover, pockets that hold what you need, and a shape that never touches the part of you that you have stopped talking about. There is a difference, and you feel it the second it is on.

I would tell you the brown is the one I reach for most, the blue is the one Christine says suits me best, and the black is the one for an evening. The red is the one that gets a comment, and the green and the yellow come out when the garden does. 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 middle sizes are already showing as low. When I checked again this morning the medium and the large were marked almost sold out. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been putting on a dress and then changing out of it before you reach the car, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Wendy