A letter from a reader

At 63, I had decided pink belonged to my granddaughters

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 a baby shower, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started in the fitting-room aisle of a department store, of all places, shopping with my granddaughter for the shower. She is six. She pointed at a rack of pink and said, Grandma, you should get the pink one, and I heard myself give the answer I have been giving for years.

Oh no, honey. Pink is not for grandmas.

She asked why. And standing there in the aisle, I realized I did not have an answer. Not one. Somewhere around fifty I had quietly handed the whole colour over, filed it away with long hair and dangly earrings, things a woman my age supposedly surrenders, and I had never once asked who made that rule.

How a colour gets taken off you

Nobody sends a letter. It happens in the stores, one rack at a time.

Walk into the section meant for us and count the colours. Navy. Beige. Grey. Black. A cautious burgundy at Christmas. The pretty colours, the soft pinks and corals and lilacs, all live three departments away with the twenty-year-olds, and the message lands without anyone saying it. Those are not for you anymore.

So you stop reaching for them, and then you stop missing them, and then one day a six-year-old asks you why, and you have nothing.

So I went looking for the pink one

That evening I went looking, out of pure stubbornness, and found Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The dress is called the Aurelia, and it settled the question of whether pink is for grandmas on the first wearing.

It is a soft blush pink, grown-up pink, nothing sugary about it. The dress floats, there is no other word, layer over layer of light premium material with a skirt made of three overlapping tiers that move like a ballet when you walk. The fluttered sleeves cover the tops of the arms and weigh nothing. There is no waistband at all, it flows straight from the shoulder and skims past everything on its way to the floor.

It is the prettiest thing I have owned in twenty years, and it is also, quietly, one of the most comfortable.

What happened at the baby shower

I wore it to the shower with flat sandals and my good earrings.

Three different women asked me where it was from. Sue looked me over and said, pink, well, it suits you, which from Sue is a full endorsement. And my granddaughter, the one who started all this, told me I looked like a flower. I have received worse reviews in my time.

But the part I keep coming back to is a smaller moment. Catching myself in the hallway mirror on the way out the door, and feeling, for a second, delighted. Not appropriate, not presentable. Delighted. I had forgotten clothes could do that.

It has been out twice since, and both times I have worn it the way you wear something you love, which is to say, with no occasion at all.

Three things I have learned since

One. There is grown-up pink. Blush, not bubblegum. It flatters skin our age better than half the sensible colours I have been loyal to, and nobody tells us that.

Two. The layers are doing quiet work. The tiers float past the middle and the hips without touching anything, so the dress is romantic AND forgiving, which is a rarer combination than it should be.

Three. The sizing is honest. Small to 5XL, the same floating cut throughout, in five colours. But if you are here, be honest with yourself, you are here for the pink.

About the price

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

The Aurelia is $59.95. It was $120.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because dresses that float like this usually cost like they float.

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, “The layers float beautifully and cover everything, and I have never had so many compliments on a dress. I feel pretty in it, which I had not felt in years.” 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.

Name the colour you quietly gave up. Everybody has one. And then ask yourself the question my granddaughter asked me in that fitting-room aisle, which is simply, why. If your answer is as empty as mine was, the colour is still yours, and it has been waiting.

Not because a dress changes anything. It does not. But being delighted by your own reflection at 63 is not nothing. It is, in fact, quite a lot.

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.

Pink is mine again. My granddaughter takes full credit.

Peggy