A letter from a reader

At 63 and five foot three, I had decided long dresses were for other women

I am five foot three, which I mention because it explains everything that follows. Somewhere in my forties I tried on a long dress in a department store, looked in the mirror, saw a short woman standing in a tent with the hem under her shoe, and made a decision I never revisited. Long dresses were for tall women. I am 63, I am not a writer, and for twenty years I have worn everything to the knee and looked at maxi dresses on other people the way you look at a house you will never live in.

Then three different women asked me about a long dress at a garden lunch on Saturday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Here is what the fitting rooms had taught me. A long dress on a short woman goes wrong in three places. The fabric is stiff, so it stands out from you and adds width where you have none to spare. There is no waist, so you become one shape from shoulder to floor. And the hem is cut for somebody five foot eight, so you hitch it up on the stairs and stand on it getting out of the car. So I did the sensible thing. I stayed at the knee. Safe, and short, and quietly a little sad about it every summer.

Long and drowned in it, or knee-length and safe. For twenty years I chose safe.

Nobody decides to rule out a whole length of dress. It happens in one fitting room on one bad afternoon, and then you never go back and check.

Then Carol came to lunch in one, and Carol is shorter than me

My sister Carol is five foot one. In June she came up from San Antonio in a long cream dress covered in tiny red flowers, with a soft wrap V at the neck and little cap sleeves, and she walked up my porch steps in it without touching the hem once. I said, out loud, since when do you wear long dresses. She said, since I found one that was cut for a person, not a coat rack.

It is called the Willow, from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered the cream that evening, fully expecting to send it back.

It did not go back. Twenty years of knee-length did.

What happened at the garden lunch

I wore it on Saturday with flat tan sandals and my hair up, and I walked across a lawn and up two sets of steps without hitching anything.

Three different women asked me where it was from before we sat down. And Sue, who has known me twenty years and does not hand out compliments, said I looked taller and could not work out why. From Sue, that is a speech.

Here is why it works, as far as I can tell. The fabric is light and it drapes, so it falls close to you instead of standing out from you, which is the whole difference on a short frame. There is a seam at the waist with a little gathering, so I have a middle, and everything above and below it reads as two lengths instead of one long one. The wrap V at the neck opens things up and does something for the neck. The cap sleeves cover the shoulders without adding anything. And it stops at the ankle, not the floor, so I am not stepping on it, hitching it, or catching it on the stairs.

It has been out five times in nine days. To the store, to church, twice to the porch of an evening, and once to the mailbox because I had it on and did not want to change. Frank asked if it was new. It has been three weeks. That is quick, for Frank.

Three things I have learned since

One. It was never the length. It was the fabric. A stiff maxi drowns a short woman. A light one that drapes does the opposite, and I wish somebody had told me that in the fitting room in 2004.

Two. A waist is not optional. The little seam and gathering at the middle is the difference between a dress and a tent, and once you have seen it you cannot unsee it on every long dress that does not have one.

Three. Six colours, honest sizes. The cream with red flowers I own, a blue, a grey, a red, a brown and a green, from an XS to a 2XL. I went back for the blue. Carol, at five foot one, has three.

About the price

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

The Willow is $37.95. It was $76.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a long dress that actually fits a short woman is not something I had ever managed to buy at any price.

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 this is their final summer sale as they close this chapter of the shop.

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, “I am 5 foot 2 and this is the first long dress that has ever fit me without hemming. Light, pretty, and it has a waist.” 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 decided years ago that long dresses were for other women, you were not wrong about the dresses you tried. You were wrong that they were the only ones. This is the one that was cut for the rest of us, and it costs about what I used to pay to have a hem taken up.

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

I am still five foot three. I just stopped dressing like it was a problem.

Peggy