FRANCES™ | Stand Collar Blouse

“Fits as though it was made for me.”

I had all but given up on buying clothes online. Everything seems cut for someone half my age. This one sat perfectly on the shoulder, the sleeve finished right at the wrist and the hem fell exactly where I hoped. I wore it out that same evening.

“My daughter tried to claim it.”

She's in her thirties and has an opinion on everything I own. She lifted this off the chair, held it up against herself and asked when she could have it. I said never. The fabric has a real weight to it and it doesn't crease the moment you sit down.

“Three women stopped me at the lunch.”

I wore it to a charity lunch not expecting anything of it. By the time dessert came, three different women had asked me where it was from. One of them wrote the name on the back of her place card. That has never happened to me with anything off the high street.

“At last, something with real sleeves.”

At my age I want a bit of coverage without feeling bundled up, and this gets the balance right. The cut skims rather than clings and the sleeves are properly finished. I'm fifty seven and I felt completely myself in it, which is more than I can say for most of what I've bought lately.

“My husband noticed. That never happens.”

Forty years married and the man wouldn't notice a new haircut. I came down the stairs in this and he set the paper down. That's the whole review really. It's been through the wash twice already and it still looks the way it did the day it arrived.

“I wore it four times in a week.”

Errands on the Monday, dinner on the Wednesday, my grandson's recital on the Saturday. It carried all of it. That's what I'm after now, not another thing hanging in the wardrobe waiting for an occasion that never comes. I've ordered it in a second colour.

“I don't write reviews. This was the exception.”

A friend turned up to book club wearing hers and I asked about it before I'd even sat down. Ordered mine that night. It arrived in five days, neatly folded, no plastic mess. The seams are clean on the inside, which tells you everything about how it's made.