A letter from a reader

I have bought blouses for forty years, and most of them were navy. This is the first one I have ever written a letter about.

Six things I have noticed since a fall lunch in East Texas, from a woman who drove four hours to look at the leaves and found them in the pie line.

Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read

Let me tell you who is talking before I tell you anything else. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. I am not a fashion person. Somewhere around my fiftieth birthday I decided that a blouse was a thing you wore so nobody would have to think about it, and I bought accordingly. Before this fall I owned eleven of them, navy and gray and one daring beige. Frank said my side of the closet looked like the teller line at a bank.

The blouses I am writing about are printed blouses from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Mine is the Heather, covered in big fall leaves in orange and rust and gold, set in dark lines like a church window. The other one I will tell you about is the Teresa, a sage green paisley I went back for. There are twenty-two blouses in the collection, and I have looked at every one of them more than once.

Here is how I found them. This past October, Frank and I drove up to Winnsboro for the Autumn Trails weekend, because I had been told for years that East Texas is where you go to see the leaves turn. Four hours in the truck. The leaves had not turned. Wood County was as green as a pool table, and Frank said that was about what he expected. One of the churches off the square was doing a chicken spaghetti lunch in the fellowship hall, so we went in out of the disappointment and got in line. I had on my navy blouse. So did the woman behind me, and I am fairly sure so did the woman behind her.

The woman in front of me did not. She was about my age, in jeans, reaching for a slice of pecan pie, and she was wearing every color we had just driven four hours to see. Big orange and gold leaves, front and back and all the way down both sleeves. It was the only fall color in Wood County, and three people had already stopped her about it before she got to the coffee. Her name, I found out, is Wynelle. So, standing there with an empty paper plate, I asked her, plainly. She looked at my blouse, and she was nice about it. “Honey,” she said, “I got tired of being the wallpaper.”

Mine, at our own church’s fall lunch back home. I went back for the pie and stopped two conversations on the way.

Two piles

I have looked at printed blouses for forty years and walked away from nearly all of them, because what is out there falls into two piles. There is the little gray flower, so small you cannot tell what it is, that my mother wore to bridge club. And there is the big loud tunic that looks like somebody reupholstered you. So I did what most of us do. I went back to the rack and bought another navy one, because nobody has ever been sorry about navy, and nobody has ever crossed a fellowship hall to ask about it either.

For forty years I chose between disappearing and looking like somebody’s sofa. Wynelle looked like October.

The afternoon it came. I laid it out on the bed and looked at it for a while before I had the nerve.

I ordered mine on my phone in the truck before we were out of Wood County, and Frank did not say one word, which is how I know he had an opinion. I have had it on a good many times since, along with the second one I went back for. Going by all those days, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.

2

A collar that looks like you tried

For all that color, the cut is plain and proper. A classic collar, a neat row of six small buttons down the front, a neat cuff at the wrist. No ruffles, no bow at the neck, nothing that makes a woman my age look like she is dressing up as somebody younger. The boutique calls it a polished, put-together look, and I will take that. It is the collar that keeps all that color looking like a blouse and not a costume.

The collar and the buttons, up close, with the first cup of coffee. Look at the lines between those leaves.

★★★★★

I still work two days a week at our county clerk’s office and I was not sure about the print. With that collar it looks every bit as neat as what I wore before.

Barbara T., Yantis

4

Tucked or loose, and both look meant

The boutique says you can wear it tucked into tailored pants or loose over jeans, and I have done both in the same week. The hem is curved up at the sides, so left out over jeans it looks finished and not like you forgot to tuck it in. Tucked into my good black pants, it went to dinner with Frank’s retired friends from work. That is one blouse doing what I used to need two for.

The Teresa, the second one, on my way to lunch with my sister Sue. Loose, with jeans, and I did not change my mind at the door.

★★★★★

I wear the paisley with white jeans for lunch and tucked into navy slacks for church. My daughter thought I had bought two blouses.

Judy M., Pickton

6

Twenty-two to choose from, S to 5XL

There are twenty-two in the collection, sized S to 5XL. Most are prints, leaves and paisley and western florals and patchwork, along with some stripes and plaids and a few solids, in case you need to work up to it. The Heather also comes in a soft blue. The Teresa also comes in pink and in a red bandana print. Wynelle told me she owns four. I said that seemed like a lot, and now I own two, and my sister Sue has been in my closet asking about the red one, so I believe I know what she is getting.

My closet now. You can see which ones I reach for. Frank says he can finally find me in a crowd.

★★★★★

I wear a 3XL and I am used to getting whatever is left in a sad color. I got to pick, and I picked the leaves.

Donna F., Alba

The Heather and the Teresa, against what used to hang in my closet

You can keep buying navy, like I did for most of my life. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

The Heather is $49.95, and it was $100.00. The Teresa is the same, and so is every blouse in the collection. When I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch. I have not found one. It came with free shipping, it looked like the picture, and it went straight on.

The Teresa, on the bedroom door the night before my granddaughter’s school program in Belton. She asked if she could touch the swirls.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these come in small runs and the most popular prints and sizes go first. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have bought a great many blouses that nobody ever noticed, including me, and this is the first one I have looked forward to getting dressed for.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your closet looks like the teller line at a bank, and you are about due to go to a lunch or a church supper or a holiday table where somebody is going to take a picture, this is where I would start. Take a look before the print you want sells through in your size, because once this stock is gone, it is gone. Frank and I may try Winnsboro again next fall. The leaves can do what they want. I am bringing my own.

Peggy

THE PRINTED BLOUSE COLLECTION

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

$100.00 $49.95

• 22 blouses, from the fall leaf Heather to the paisley Teresa
• Prints that do the work on their own
• Classic collar and a neat button front
• Relaxed fit, tucked in or worn loose
• Soft and lightweight, S to 5XL
• Free shipping

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