A Letter From a Reader: The Joanna Blouse (Elaine)
At 62, I had not worn a print in twenty years. Three women stopped me about this one before ten o'clock.
Why a woman who lived in plain white shirts owns a paisley blouse in three colours, written down by a customer, not a shop.
Elaine · Customer · Hervey Bay, Queensland · 4 min read
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 blouse, of all things, at the Saturday markets, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.
For about twenty years my wardrobe has been plain white shirts and navy. Safe, clean, and completely invisible. A print, I had decided somewhere along the way, was for younger women, or for women braver than me. Then my daughter came to stay, looked in my wardrobe, and said it.
She was right. So when I saw the Joanna, from Portsea Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, I ordered the green one before I could talk myself out of it.
The green came first. The pink and the red followed within the month.
What I had wrong about prints
I had always thought a print would look busy on me, or make me look bigger. What I had never tried was a print like this one. Paisley is soft and swirling rather than sharp, and the colours sit together so that from across the room it reads as one rich colour, green or pink or red, with movement in it. Up close you see the detail. From a distance you just look well put together.
The collar and the buttons. A proper shirt, just not a boring one.
It is a proper shirt
That is the part that won me over. It is not a floaty tunic or a peasant top. It has a real collar, a full row of buttons down the front, and long sleeves that roll to the elbow and stay there. The cut is loose and relaxed, so it skims rather than clings, and it works tucked into trousers or left out over them. Everything I liked about my white shirts, just with some life in it.
See The Joanna Blouse →What happened at the markets
I wore the green one the first Saturday it arrived, with my white cropped trousers and my good sandals, down to the markets for mangoes.
Three women asked me about it before ten o'clock. One of them was the lady who runs the honey stall, who has sold me honey every Saturday for six years and has never once said anything that was not about honey.
The green one at the markets. Peter took this while I was choosing mangoes.
What I noticed more than the compliments was how comfortable it was. It was nearly thirty degrees under the fig trees, and with the sleeves rolled up it was as cool as anything I own.
Three things I have learned since
One. A soft print is far more forgiving than a plain colour. It does not show a crease, a splash of coffee or a bit of mango.
Two. The loose cut earns its keep. It skims over the middle, so you stop thinking about it, which I had forgotten was possible in a shirt.
Three. The sizing is generous and honest. It runs from S right up to 6XL, the same relaxed shape the whole way up, in green, pink and red.
The red one, folded on the kitchen table the morning after it came.
About the price
I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. The Joanna is A$64.95. It was A$160.00.
They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a spring sale to shift the season's stock before it turns. I have paid more than that for a white shirt I could not tell apart from the other four in the wardrobe.
The pink one, the morning it arrived.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you have spent twenty years in white and navy because a print felt like something for other women, it was never you that was wrong. It was the print. Try a soft one, in a proper shirt, and see what your daughter says.
— Elaine
Joanna | Paisley Button-Up Blouse
- Soft swirling paisley print in green, pink or red
- Classic collar and full button-front
- Long sleeves that roll to the elbow
- Relaxed loose cut, tucked in or left out
- Sizes S to 6XL, free delivery across Australia
Spring sale on now. Middle sizes selling first.