I Almost Didn’t Order This Top. Here’s What Changed My Mind.

A note from a reader who almost gave up on summer tops, and the small Florida boutique that quietly changed her mind.

I am 61 years old, and I have absolutely no business getting emotional about a summer top on a Tuesday morning.

But here we are.

There is a woman in my walking group called Linda. She is seventy one, sharp as a tack, and a few weeks ago she showed up at the trail head in a soft sage green V neck top that stopped two of us mid sentence. We all just stared at her. By the end of our four miles I had asked her three times where it came from.

She told me about a small coastal label called Sanibel Boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for twenty two years this month. They are running an anniversary sale to celebrate, and Linda had ordered the top in three colors the week before.

I went home, looked it up, and almost closed the tab. I have been burned by enough internet shopping in the last decade to be deeply suspicious of any small label I have not heard of. But something about Linda’s top kept nagging at me. So I poured a glass of wine, sat down on the couch, and did the thing I had not done with a clothing brand in a very long time. I read.

The bit that got me

The top is called the Zamma. It is 100% linen, which is the part that surprised me, because almost nothing at the price point of a typical mall top is actually 100% linen anymore. It is almost always a blend, or what they call “linen look,” which is mostly polyester with a textured weave designed to fool you in a photograph.

I had completely forgotten what real linen does until I started reading about it again. Real linen breathes in a way that no synthetic blend ever will. It does not cling to your middle when the heat kicks in. It does not stick to the backs of your arms after ten minutes in the car. It actually gets softer the more you wash it, like good cotton sheets that have been on the bed for a few summers.

The other thing I noticed was the cut. A relaxed V neck with a small soft button detail at the front, a loose body that skims instead of hugs, sleeves that sit just right on a real arm. There is no part of me, at 61, that wants to be hugged by a top in July. I want to be skimmed.

There is no part of me, at 61, that wants to be hugged by a top in July. I want to be skimmed.

I read about thirty of the reviews before I even looked at the price. 4.8 stars across 847 women, almost all of them my age, almost all of them using the same word, which was finally.

→ Read about the Zamma

I ordered the Zamma

I ordered three. I will be honest, I did not plan to. I went on the website meaning to order one in soft beige to test it, and by the time I got to the checkout I had also added the navy and the soft sage that Linda had been wearing. The 22nd anniversary sale brings the top down to $59.95 from $129.95, and the more colors you grab the more comes off, all the way to 30 percent.

About a week later, the first one arrived in a small kraft paper parcel, tied with a bit of natural twine, with a handwritten note tucked inside. Thank you for trying us. Hope this one earns its place in your closet. Eleanor.

The morning the first parcel arrived. Eleanor’s note is still on my kitchen counter.

I put the beige on with white linen trousers for lunch with my sister and she said, you look summer. She is sixty seven. She does not lie about clothes.

What I noticed in the first week

Three things stood out to me, and I have written them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. It does not cling. I wore the navy on the second hottest day we have had this year, walking from the car to the grocery store and back, and not once did the fabric stick to my back or the underside of my arms. That has not happened in a top I have owned in at least ten years.

2. It got softer. After two washes the linen turned into something that almost feels like a worn cotton bedsheet. Lightweight, breathable, and somehow more flattering than it was the day it arrived.

3. People notice. My sister asked. My hairdresser asked. The woman behind me in the line at the post office asked. Three people in three days, all wanting to know where I got it.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me ordering in the first place. $59.95 for a real 100% linen top is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote out what I had paid, or seen, for similar tops in the last few years. The note still sits next to my keys.

• Eileen Fisher linen, $228
• J.Jill linen, $89
• Sanibel Boutique Zamma, $59.95

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. ...how??

The note I scribbled next to my iced tea, trying to make sense of it.

I emailed the boutique. I figured if it was a scam, the email would bounce or someone would not bother to write back. The reply came the next morning from Eleanor herself.

“This sale is the only time of year we let go of these prices. We are twenty two years old this month, and I would rather the tops go to women who will actually wear them than sit in a back room. The next time you will see this price is next May, if we are lucky.”

What I’d tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on my back porch right now with a glass of iced tea, and you had asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

I would say that summer dresses and tops have, for ten years, been quietly designed for women in their twenties and sold to women in their sixties. I had genuinely started to think that comfort and beauty had divorced each other somewhere around the time I turned fifty, and that I was supposed to pick one. The Zamma is the first thing I have owned in a decade that has changed my mind.

I would tell you that the navy is the most flattering thing I have ever put on my body, and that the beige is the one you reach for the most often, and that the soft sage is the one people compliment in the grocery store. I would tell you to skip the white if you are clumsy with red wine, and that the red is gorgeous but bolder than I expected.

I would tell you that my daughter Sarah, who has not bought me a piece of clothing in her adult life, sent me a screenshot of the navy with the message, “Mom. Read this. I am buying you the navy one.” And then she ordered one for herself.

I would tell you that the popular colors are already starting to thin out, that the navy was almost sold out in the larger sizes the day I checked again, and that the anniversary sale is the lowest it goes all year. I would tell you that I bought three, that I have worn one of them five times in two weeks, and that I am genuinely, for the first time in maybe ten years, looking forward to a hot day.

If you have been quietly looking for a summer top that does not punish you for being a real woman in real heat, this is the closest thing I have found in years.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Barbara