The Dress That Skims The Part Of Me I Stopped Wanting To See

A note from a reader about the small Florida boutique dress that finally let her stop hiding her middle, and stop ducking out of every photograph.

For about six years now, I have been the one who offers to take the picture.

You know the role. Someone gathers everyone together at a birthday or a holiday or just a nice lunch, and there is that little shuffle of people getting close, and I am the one who says, oh, let me take it, so that I can stand safely on the other side of the camera. I told myself I was being helpful. The truth is I had simply stopped wanting to see myself in photographs.

It was my middle. It always was. Somewhere in my fifties my waist softened the way most women's do, and no matter what I put on, I felt like the fabric found my stomach and announced it. So I started dressing to hide. Dark colors. Tunics over leggings. Anything loose, which usually meant anything shapeless. And I stepped out of the photos.

Three weeks ago a friend of mine mentioned a dress from a small Florida boutique called Sanibel. It is called the Luna. I want to tell you about it, because I think if you are a woman my age, you may have been quietly dressing to hide something too.

What it is

It is a boho style dress with a soft, relaxed A line cut. A gentle V neckline, which I have learned is the most forgiving neckline there is for a woman my age. Lantern sleeves, the kind that puff softly and then gather, so my upper arms are covered without anything feeling tight. And a quiet geometric print, the sort of thing that draws the eye into a pattern instead of onto any one part of you.

But I want to be honest about the part that actually mattered to me.

It skims my middle instead of clinging to it.

That is the whole thing. The A line falls from the top and simply floats past my stomach, so there is room where I have always wanted room, and the tummy coverage is genuine, not the kind that is promised on a label and then disappears the moment you sit down. I put it on in my bedroom, turned to the side in the mirror the way I always brace myself to do, and for the first time in a long while I did not immediately reach for something else.

Hanging by the window this morning. The first dress in years I have not hidden in.

It does not hide me. It just lets me breathe, and then it lets me forget I was worried.

The photograph

The fourth time I wore it was my granddaughter Emily's swim lesson. My daughter Sarah was visiting from Boston, and she had her phone out, and before I could do my usual little maneuver to the other side of the camera, she had already taken it.

She turned the phone around to show me, the way she always does, expecting me to wave it off the way I always do.

I did not wave it off.

I looked at it, and I looked like myself, comfortable and at ease in the sun, and not once did my eye go straight to my stomach the way it has for years. Sarah watched my face. She did not say anything clever. She just said, quietly, "Mom, you look really nice in that." And then she asked me where it came from.

"You did not ask to take the picture this time," Sarah said. "You were just in it."

→ Read about the Luna

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking to feel pretty. I think by a certain age you quietly lower that bar to feeling comfortable, and then you lower it again to feeling covered. What surprised me about the Luna is that it gave me all three at once without me having to choose.

Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The cut does the work. I did not have to suck anything in or stand a certain way. The relaxed A line shape skims down past the middle on its own, so I stopped thinking about my stomach the moment I had it on.

2. The sleeves are kind. The lantern sleeves cover the top of the arm softly without gripping. That alone has been keeping a whole shelf of cardigans in the closet this summer.

3. The print is forgiving. The soft geometric pattern keeps the eye moving across the whole dress instead of settling on any one part of me. I have learned, late, what a difference a quiet print makes.

It is light enough that I have worn it through real Florida heat without wilting, and it has the kind of relaxed shape that lets me kneel in the garden, sit at a long lunch, and bend down for Buster, our little rescue terrier, without ever once feeling like the dress was fighting me.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me from ordering. The Luna for $61.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote down what I had paid, or seen, for a flattering boho dress like this in the last few years.

• Anthropologie maxi, $168
• Soft Surroundings, $98
• Sanibel Luna, $61.95

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

What I'd tell you if we were friends

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

I would tell you that women our age have spent years being quietly taught that the only way to deal with a softer middle is to hide it under something shapeless. The Luna is not hiding. It is a real dress, with a real shape, that simply happens to be cut so it skims the part of you that you may have stopped wanting to see. There is a difference, and you feel it the moment you put it on.

I would tell you the blue is the one I reach for most, the green is the one Sarah says suits me best, and the red is the one I bought because I had not bought myself a colorful dress in years. I would tell you to buy two. If you buy two the stack discount comes off, and if you are anything like me you will end up living in them anyway.

I would tell you that the popular sizes are already showing as almost gone. When I checked again this morning, a couple of the middle sizes in blue and green were nearly out. The anniversary sale ends when the sizes do.

If you have, for longer than you would like to admit, been the one who offers to take the picture so you do not have to be in it, please do not wait.

While the sizes are still in stock.

— Barbara