A Letter From a Reader: Six Things (The Moana Collection, Elaine)
Forty summers of dresses and I never wrote a word about one. This is the exception
Six things the Moana collection gets right that summer dresses get wrong, from a woman who does not review clothes.
Elaine · Customer · Hervey Bay, Queensland · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Elaine, I am 62, I live in Hervey Bay with my husband Peter and Teddy, our little dog from the rescue shelter, and I have never in my life sat down to write about a dress. What I have done is spend forty summers in dresses that clung, faded, or made me look like I had given up. So this is not a review. It is a woman who was wrong about a dress, saying so.
The ones I am writing about are the Moana collection, from Portsea Boutique, a small shop near the water in Portsea that Mel has run for 22 years and is now moving online. A friend from my walking group put me onto it, and when the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
Sleeveless midi dresses in bold ocean and garden prints, all in the same easy cut. On a 62-year-old in Hervey Bay. Read on.
Here is what forty summers taught me. Summer dresses come in two piles. The sensible pile: dark, shapeless and practical, the ones that hide you so well you disappear at a family lunch. And the pretty pile: thin, fitted and short, clinging the moment the heat finds you.
Shapeless and invisible, or pretty and clingy. Those were the summer options, and I had done my years in both.
The Moana is the first dress I have owned that is neither, and having worn two of them to the markets, two lunches and a birthday in Brisbane, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day they came. I ordered one and talked myself into a second print at the checkout. I am glad I did.
They do not look like sensible dresses
They look like somewhere nice to be going. The Moana itself is an ocean mosaic in greens, teals and blues, and the rest of the collection runs from blue damask to soft watercolour gardens. Every print reads as one fresh colour from across the room and becomes the thing people ask about up close.
The Moana print up close. It looks like the bay on a still morning.
"Three women asked where it was from at the Saturday markets. Nobody has asked about a dress of mine in years."
They give you room through the middle
The waist is softly gathered, so you have a shape without anything holding on. Below it the skirt falls straight past the tummy and hips and moves when you walk. Nothing pulls when you sit down for a long lunch.
"Wore it to a three-hour lunch and forgot I had it on. That has never happened in a summer dress."
The fabric is the clever part
It is light and breathable with an easy pull-on shape, no zips and no fuss, so it stays cool on a humid Queensland afternoon and does not stick to you in the car. It washes, it dries on the line by lunch, and it comes back looking like it did the day it arrived.
"Thirty-three degrees at the markets and I was the only one not fanning myself."
The gathered waist is what makes them work
Softly gathered, sitting where a waist should, and letting go when you sit. It is the detail that makes these look like proper dresses rather than a beach cover-up, and it is the same in every print.
The gathered waist. It gives you a shape and never digs in.
"It's the waist. It gives me a shape without squeezing, and I don't need a belt or a cardigan to feel dressed."
Honest sizes, measurements included
They run from S to 5XL, AU 8 to 38, and the size chart prints the bust, hips and length for every size, so there is no guessing. The length runs from 121 cm in the S to 128 cm in the 5XL, a true midi. I ordered my usual size and it fitted straight away.
"I checked the bust and hip measurements against a dress I love and ordered the size the chart said. It fitted perfectly the first time."
They earn their keep between outings
This is the part I did not expect. They do the shops, my morning at the library, coffee after the walk with Teddy, and two of them went to Brisbane for the weekend at my daughter Emma's. My good dresses used to live in the wardrobe between occasions. These barely get put away.
Packed for a weekend at Emma's. Two prints, one pair of sandals, no thinking.
The Moana, against the summer dresses you have been buying
You can find a summer dress for thirty-odd dollars anywhere. I know, because I own the evidence. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Thin fabric that clings in the heat
Identical to every other dress on the rack
Pulls across the tummy and hips
No waist, or a waist that digs in
One vague size, no measurements
Light, breathable, easy pull-on shape
Prints people actually ask about
A skirt that skims the tummy and hips
A softly gathered waist that lets go
S to 5XL, measurements printed
About the price
Every dress in the Moana collection is A$79.95 at the moment, down from A$319.95, because Portsea Boutique is closing the shop and moving online.
I will pass on what Mel told me, which is that once the shop closes, this price goes with it. Her words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that a price like that is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and three weeks in I have not found it. And the offer works across the whole collection: 15 percent off two, and up to 30 percent off five.
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 people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
By the front door, ready for Brisbane round two. Teddy is not coming, and he knows it.
If you have a lunch, a birthday, a weekend away or an ordinary Tuesday in your future, and your summer wardrobe is a pile of dresses that hide you, this is the collection I would put in your hands myself, while your size is still there. Stop dithering and go and look.
Elaine
The Moana Collection
- Bold ocean and garden prints, same easy cut
- Room through the tummy and hips, never clings
- Light, breathable, pull-on shape
- Softly gathered waist that lets go when you sit
- True midi, 121 to 128 cm
- Sizes S to 5XL, measurements included
- Free tracked delivery & 30-day returns
Stack and save: Buy 2 save 15% · Buy 3 save 20% · Buy 4 save 25% · Buy 5 save 30%
See the Moana CollectionClearing as the Portsea shop moves online. Once a size is gone, it is gone.