A letter from a reader

At 63, my favorite jeans and I finally had to have a talk

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But three different women asked me about a dress at the farmers market, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

I have worn jeans my entire life. Jeans to raise children, jeans to build a garden, jeans to two-thirds of every occasion I was ever invited to. And I will say out loud what a lot of us have been thinking quietly for years.

The jeans have been winning fewer and fewer arguments lately.

The waistband after lunch. The heat of them in a Texas July. The little wrestle getting them on over a knee that has opinions now. I kept buying them anyway, year after year, because that blue is who I am, and dresses always felt like they belonged to some other, fancier woman.

What I thought I would lose

Every time somebody suggested I would be more comfortable in dresses, I heard the same thing underneath it. Give up. Give up the blue, the ease, the just-thrown-on-ness, the whole unfussy way I have dressed for sixty years, and start being a lady about things.

No thank you. So the jeans stayed, and the discomfort stayed with them, because I thought the choice was between comfort and staying myself.

Nobody had told me the loyalty was never to the jeans. It was to the blue.

Then I saw my blue on a dress

At the market in June, a woman my age walked past in a dress in that exact washed denim blue, soft and lived-in looking, with pretty stitched stripes running down the front, and my first thought was, that is not a dress, that is jeans that figured something out.

I stopped her, which I never do. It is from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and it is called the Evelyn. I ordered it that evening.

It is my blue, exactly. The soft faded blue of a favorite pair at their ten-year best, in a light premium material that drapes instead of gripping. It goes on over the head in five seconds. The seam sits up under the bust and everything below just flows, loose and cool to mid-calf, with air actually moving through it on a ninety-degree day. The embroidered openwork stripes down the front lift the whole thing, so it reads as an outfit, not a surrender.

Sleeves to the elbow, a little buttoned cuff, done. It is the most me a dress has ever managed to be.

What happened at the market

I wore it back to the very same farmers market, with flat sandals, feeling slightly like a woman in a witness protection program for jeans wearers.

Three different women asked me where it was from. And Sue, who has known me in jeans for twenty years and would notice a betrayal, looked me up and down and said, that is very much still you. Which was the only review I actually needed.

But the part I keep coming back to is two o'clock that afternoon. The hour when the waistband usually files its complaint. Nothing. I was sitting on the porch shelling peas in what looked like a proper put-together dress, as comfortable as I have ever been in my life, and the jeans were upstairs, unbothered, unworn.

They are still there. We are on good terms. They are just not in charge anymore.

Three things I have learned since

One. The colour was the loyalty. If you are a lifelong jeans woman, you are not attached to the waistband, I promise you. You are attached to the blue. Keep the blue, lose the fight.

Two. The stripes earn their keep. The vertical embroidery is what makes it look chosen rather than easy, and it draws a long unbroken line from shoulder to hem, which flatters more than I expected.

Three. The sizing is honest. Small to 3XL, the same relaxed swing throughout, in seven colours. I went back for the green, but the blue is the one that started all this.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Evelyn is $53.95. It was $106.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a good pair of jeans costs more than that now and does considerably less for you.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a summer sale to move the season's stock.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “It is the comfort of my old jeans without any of the squeeze, and the embroidery makes it look far more expensive than it was.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you are a jeans woman whose jeans have been getting harder to love, you do not have to switch sides and become somebody else. You just have to notice what you were actually loyal to all along. Mine was a colour. It travels.

Not because a dress changes anything. It does not. But being completely comfortable and completely yourself, at the same time, in August, is something my jeans stopped offering years ago.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

It is the blue I always loved, without the fight.

Peggy