A letter from a reader

At 67, I bought a pair of dungarees for the first time in forty years

Lorraine MitchellNewcastle, NSW · 28 October 2026

I have never written one of these before, and I nearly didn’t, because I can already hear what some of you are thinking. Dungarees. At sixty-seven. I thought exactly the same thing.

Let me explain how I got here. Somewhere in the last few years, getting dressed stopped being easy. The waistbands started digging in. The zips became a fiddle. And without quite deciding to, I found myself reaching for the same elasticated, apologetic sort of clothes every morning, the ones that don’t ask anything of you and don’t give anything back either.

Comfortable, yes. But every time I caught sight of myself I thought, when did I start dressing like I had given up?

That is the trap nobody warns you about. You can be comfortable or you can feel like yourself, and after a certain age the shops seem to think you can’t have both.

Floral dungarees hanging in a bedroom — What I laid out to try, fully expecting to send them back.

Then my sister turned up in a pair

Not the dungarees you are picturing. A soft grey pair covered in wildflowers, pinks and whites and little reds trailing up the legs, worn over a plain white tee. She looked comfortable and she looked wonderful, and I didn’t think those two things could go together any more.

They were from Sydney Boutique, a small online shop that has been quietly dressing women our age. They do a whole summer collection of dungarees and jumpsuits, in well over a hundred prints. I ordered the grey wildflower pair that evening, fully expecting to be sending them back by Friday.

Floral dungarees laid out on a bed — The morning they arrived. I did not send them back.

See the Jumpsuit Collection

What happened at the barbie

I wore them to a family barbecue, over a white tee, with flat sandals.

Four women asked me where they were from before I had even got a drink. One of them was Pam, who I have known since our children were at primary school together and who has never once commented on anything I have worn. She said I looked like I had made an effort for once. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

Woman wearing floral dungarees in a garden

I have barely had them off since. In the garden, to the shops, down to my daughter’s for Sunday lunch. You step into them over a top and you are dressed, all in one, in about four seconds.

Three things I have learned since

One. Nothing digs in. There is no waistband fighting you, no zip, no tucking anything in. You put them on and then you simply forget about them for the rest of the day, which at our age is worth a great deal.

Two. The print is what saves them. A plain pair really would look like you were off to do the weeding. It is the flowers that make them read as a proper outfit, something you chose, rather than something you gave in to.

Three. There is one for everyone. They do them in more prints than I could count: florals, stripes, patchwork, bees, even one covered in little hens. And the sizes run from an AU 8 right up to an AU 24. Half the fun was choosing which felt like me.

Floral dungarees draped over a garden chair — They live over the back of the kitchen chair now, ready for the morning.

About the price

I will be honest, the price made me more suspicious than anything.

They are AU$69.95. They were AU$189.95.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because comfortable clothes that actually look nice usually cost a good deal more than that.

There is no catch that I have found. It is a small boutique selling online, they are running a summer sale on the collection, and the shipping is free anywhere in Australia. That was what finally decided it for me.

See the Jumpsuit Collection

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were having a cuppa and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have quietly started reaching for elasticated everything because nothing with a waistband feels good any more, but some part of you hates that you have, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to have a look.

Not because a pair of dungarees changes anything. It doesn’t. But being comfortable and still feeling like yourself, at the same time, is a small thing I had stopped believing was on offer, and I would rather you didn’t stop believing it either.

The sale is on now, and the nicest prints go first.