A letter from Ingrid

I had not worn a dress to anything in years. Then three women asked me about this one.

I will be honest with you from the start.

I am not someone who writes about clothes. I wear what is comfortable, I keep things for years, and for the best part of a decade my answer to every invitation was the same pair of black dress pants and whichever blouse was clean. It worked. Nobody ever said a word about it, which I took as a compliment.

So it feels a little silly to be writing a whole letter about a dress. But enough people have asked me about this one that I would rather tell it once, properly.

It started with an invitation. A good one, the kind you actually want to go to. And I stood in front of my closet, looked at the black pants, and for the first time in years I did not want to put them on.

The day it arrived. I laid it out and looked at it for a while before I tried it on.

The dress pants years

I did not stop wearing dresses on purpose. It happened one fitting room at a time.

One was too tight across the middle. One had no sleeves, and I am past pretending I want my upper arms out all evening. One was cut for a woman half my age and a foot taller. After enough of those you stop trying, and you tell yourself that pants are simply more practical. Which they are. They are also what you wear when you have given up on the alternative.

I had it filed under things that no longer apply to me.

What I had been getting wrong

I thought the problem was dresses. It was not. It was that the dresses I kept trying were not made with a body like mine in mind, and I took that personally.

A dress that is gathered where you want it gathered, covered where you want it covered, and soft enough to sit down in is a completely different thing. I just had not met one in a long time.

See The Dress

The dress is called the Mikaela

It comes from Grace & Curves, and it is a clever piece of work. The whole dress is made of a soft, matte chiffon with some stretch in it. Nothing shiny, nothing stiff.

The top wraps across the front. Depending on the color it is either an off-the-shoulder twist or a draped V-neck with sheer sleeves, and both come down over the upper arm. Then the fabric is gathered in folds across the middle, and that is the part that matters. The folds do the smoothing. It skims over the tummy instead of clinging to it, and I did not need anything underneath to feel held together.

Hung up the night before. Shoes chosen, for once, without an argument.

And it is not just a pretty thing on a hanger, which matters to me more. It pulls on. There is no zipper to wrestle with behind your back. The skirt is long and light and moves when you walk, and it does not ride up when you sit down. I wore it for six hours and did not adjust it once.

What happened at the party

I will keep this short, because I am aware of how it sounds.

Three women asked me about it. Not in passing. One of them crossed the room. Another wanted to know if it was comfortable, because it looked comfortable, and she said that as though it were the highest praise she had. It is.

But the part I keep coming back to is quieter than that. I caught sight of myself in a window on the way in, and I did not look away. I looked like someone who had dressed for the occasion on purpose. I had forgotten that was available to me.

Packed for the next one. It folds flat and comes out ready.

Three things worth knowing

One. It really does skim the middle. The gathering is not a trick of the photograph. It is the reason I bought it and the reason I kept it.

Two. The sizes are sensible. It runs from S to 3XL, and the stretch in the fabric gives you some room either way.

Three. It is not precious. It packs flat, it does not hold a crease, and it has already been to more than one occasion.

About the price

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so this part matters to me.

The dress is $49.95 at the moment, down from $164.95, and shipping is free. I have paid more than that for dresses that went back to the store the next morning. There is also a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is what made me comfortable ordering a dress online at all, because I was fully prepared to send it back.

I did not send it back.

See The Dress

If you were sitting at my kitchen table

This is what I would tell you, coffee on, no fuss.

If you have an occasion coming up, a wedding, an anniversary dinner, a graduation, a holiday party, a cruise, and you have been planning to wear the same pants you always wear, try one dress first. This one, if you ask me. Put it on at home, sit down in it, walk around the house. You will know within a minute.

And if it has been years, as it had for me, that is all the more reason.

— Ingrid

Sale on now. $49.95 while it lasts, in seven colors.

Ingrid Parker works with Grace & Curves as a paid content creator. This letter is her own account and was approved by her before publication.

This page is an advertisement for Grace & Curves.