Real stories · Easy summer dressing

The pretty blouse I now reach for on every warm morning

I'm 67, and summer dressing had quietly become a trial. The tops that are cool enough for the heat hang off me like a sack, and the smart, fitted ones cling in all the wrong places and are far too warm. All I really wanted was one pretty thing I could throw on that felt like me.

It sounds a small thing, but standing at the wardrobe every warm morning with nothing that felt both feminine and easy had started to wear on me. Pretty but forgiving, cool but neat — it seemed too much to ask.

Then I found the Delphine blouse from a British label called York Boutique — a soft floral-print blouse with a button front and short sleeves. I chose the pink floral, half expecting another shapeless top.

It's nothing of the sort. The fabric is soft and lightweight, so it's genuinely cool, and the button-through V and relaxed cut skim rather than cling. The short sleeves cover the top of the arm, and the pretty ditsy print quietly hides everything. I wear it tucked in or loose, and it barely needs an iron.

Feminine and cool and comfy, all at once. It's become my summer favourite.

A blouse this pretty, I assumed, would be seventy pounds. But York Boutique sells direct, so it was £34.95 in the summer sale. I nearly ordered it in a second print.

A friend admired it at coffee morning, and I've worn it with trousers, with jeans, and under a cardigan of an evening. It comes in sizes right up to a 22/24, which so rarely happens.

If summer dressing has become a chore for you too, do have a look while the sale's on. The Delphine is rated 4.6 out of 5 by more than 300 women, it's £34.95 instead of £70 — half price — and the middle sizes always seem to go first.