Real stories · Smart without the squeeze

Every smart dress gripped my middle by coffee — this one skims it instead

A smart dress that never once touches the middle — that's the quiet miracle of this one, and any woman who dresses up for a coffee morning knows why it matters. I'm 67, and my 'good' dresses all shared a policy: look lovely at ten, start gripping by eleven, and file a full report on every biscuit by noon.

What I wanted was smart that behaved like comfortable.

Then I found the Qualisse from a British label called York Boutique — a soft checked dress with three-quarter sleeves, a neat round neck and a dropped waist that ends in a little pleated hem. Mine is the blue check; there's a purple as well.

The dropped waist is the whole engineering. The dress falls straight from the shoulder and doesn't gather at the middle at all — which is why lunch passes unreported and the biscuits go unrecorded — while the pleats at the hem give it swing and polish, so it reads properly smart across any village hall. With black tights and ankle boots it's my whole winter formula.

A soft check that falls straight from the shoulder, with the waist dropped out of the equation entirely — which is why smart no longer costs comfort, or the second biscuit.

It was £29.95 — less than half the usual £70, and rather less than the 'good' dress it replaces, which spent its career being tugged at. I did check I could send it back if it didn't suit — a fortnight, free delivery — which settled it.

It has since done two coffee mornings, church, and one long café catch-up with Sandra, comfortable from first cup to last, and it was Margaret who paid the real compliment — looking me up and down and asking, with narrowed eyes, whether I'd 'been done somewhere'. No, Margaret. The waist is simply somewhere else.

If your smart dresses also file reports by noon, do have a look. The Qualisse is rated 4.7 out of 5 by more than 220 women, it comes in blue or purple check, in UK sizes 6/8 all the way to 20/22 — and at this price the blue goes first.