I Nearly Talked Myself Out of This Linen Top. I’m So Glad I Didn’t.

A note from a reader in Naples who had quietly given up on summer tops, and the small Florida boutique that changed her mind.

I am 64 years old, and I genuinely did not expect to feel anything at all about a linen top on an ordinary Thursday.

But I did.

There is a woman in my water aerobics class named Carol. She is sixty nine, funny as anything, and a few weeks ago she came out to the parking lot afterward in a soft sage green V neck top that two of us turned to look at twice. It just sat right on her. By the time we had finished chatting by our cars I had asked her where it was from more times than was strictly polite.

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 were running an anniversary sale to mark it, and Carol had ordered the top in two colors the week before.

I went home, looked it up, and very nearly closed the tab. The last decade of buying clothes online has made me suspicious of any little label I have never heard of. But Carol’s top kept nagging at me. So I made myself a cup of tea, sat down at the kitchen table, and did the thing I had not bothered to do 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 stopped me, because almost nothing at the price of an ordinary mall top is actually 100% linen anymore. It is nearly always a blend, or what they call “linen look,” which is mostly polyester with a textured weave meant 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 no synthetic blend ever will. It does not cling to your middle when the heat comes up. It does not stick to the backs of your arms after ten minutes in the car. It actually softens the more you wash it, like good cotton sheets that have been on the bed 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 properly on a real arm. There is no part of me, at 64, that wants to be hugged by a top in July. I want to be skimmed.

There is no part of me, at 64, 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 set out to. I went onto the website meaning to order one in soft beige to test it, and by the time I reached the checkout I had also added the navy and the soft sage Carol had been wearing. The 22nd anniversary sale brings the top down to $59.95 from $129.95, and the more colors you take 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, 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 neighbour and she said, you look like summer. She is sixty six. She does not hand out compliments she does not mean.

What I noticed in the first week

Three things stood out, and I wrote 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. Light, breathable, and somehow more flattering than the day it arrived.

3. People notice. My neighbour asked. My hairdresser asked. The woman behind me in the line at the pharmacy 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 nearly stopped me ordering. $59.95 for a real 100% linen top is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table with a coffee and wrote out what I had paid, or seen, for similar tops these last few years. The note is still next to my keys.

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

And underneath, in slightly bigger 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 nobody would 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 lanai 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 honestly started to think comfort and beauty had parted ways somewhere around the time I turned fifty, and that I was meant to pick one. The Zamma is the first thing I have owned in a decade that has changed my mind.

I would tell you the navy is the most flattering thing I have ever put on my body, that the beige is the one you reach for the most, and that the soft sage is the one people stop you over 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 Megan, 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’m buying you the navy one.” And then she ordered one for herself.

I would tell you that the popular colors are already thinning out, that the navy was nearly gone in the larger sizes the day I looked 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.

— Susan