I have kept a cardigan on through six Australian summers. This is the tee that finally let me take it off.

A note from a reader on the sleeve nobody designs for, and the plain $64.95 cotton tee that got it right.

By Robyn Whitfield · Wollongong, NSW

8 min read

The back door, the first warm morning. The white one on, and the cardigan where it has stayed since.

I am 61 years old, and until three weeks ago I had not left the house in a short-sleeved tee since about 2020.

Let me explain, because I suspect a great many of you are doing exactly what I was doing, and not talking about it either.

Some of you have read the letters I have written about Eleanor & Co before, the linen Iris and the little tee with the row of buttons. I meant every word, and I still wear both. But there was something I did not say in either letter, because I had not quite admitted it to myself.

I keep a cardigan on. Over everything. Thirty-one degrees in the car park at Woolworths and the cardigan stays. It is not for warmth. It is for the tops of my arms, which at some point in my late fifties stopped being something I thought about and became something I managed. My daughter Sarah calls it my summer uniform. My husband Ray stopped asking years ago.

The tees made for women our age do not help. They come in two piles. The first has a cap sleeve that stops at the widest part of the arm and draws a neat line right under it, which is the one place on earth you do not want a line drawn. The second is the comfortable pile, cut like a box, and you put it on and look like you have stopped trying. So most of us settle on a third option, which is the cardigan, and we pretend it is a style.

The Thea I wrote about in August has sleeves where a tee's sleeves usually are. I love it. And on the days I wanted my arms covered, the cardigan went straight back on over it.

Then Bev turned up at the walking group in a plain grey tee, no cardigan, on the first warm morning we had back in the middle of August, and I noticed that I had not noticed her arms.

Bev is seventy one and does not buy anything without a reason. The reason was the sleeve. It stopped at her elbow. I ordered the white one that afternoon.

The five things I noticed

The blue one on the wardrobe door. A soft sky blue, not a navy. It looks like nothing at all, which is rather the point. Look at where the sleeve stops.

The Hazel, against the tees you have been buying

You can find a plain tee for forty dollars almost anywhere. I know, because I have a drawer of them, and every one of them lives under a cardigan.

I did not think a plain tee could be got right or wrong. I was wrong about that, and I had a drawer full of the evidence.

Then I did something silly

Some of you will remember the notepad tally from the last letter. This time I counted something else. There is a hook by the back door where the cardigan lives, and I started counting the mornings it stayed on the hook. Twelve of the first fourteen. The two it did not were a southerly, and I do not think anybody could hold that against the tee.

When I mentioned the count to Ray, he said it was the first time he had seen my arms since Christmas, which is the kind of remark you are only allowed to make after thirty eight years, and only if you are prepared to be hit with a tea towel.

I went back to the website that week and ordered the blue, the red and the rose. Three at once. Ray said nothing, which was wise.

The white, the blue, the rose and the red, back from the wash. The count lives on the kitchen notepad now, next to the shopping list.

My sister, who is sixty seven and would rather be right than kind, looked at the red one and asked whether I had lost weight. I had not. It is the sleeve. It puts the line at the elbow and lets the rest of you get on with your day. Sarah saw it on the Sunday video call and has asked for the black, which makes two letters in a row that have ended with my daughter ordering something on my recommendation, and I intend to mention that at Christmas.

They come out of the wash soft, they hang dry overnight, and the neck comes out as flat as it went in. It is a plain tee. That is the entire point of it. I own the plain tee now, the one that was supposed to be easy to find, and it is the one I reach for.

Now, about the price

The Hazel is $64.95 at the moment, down from $134.95, because Eleanor has brought the summer pieces in early and they have landed at the tail end of winter, before the weather has made her argument for her. I want to be honest with you the way I always try to be. At the full price, for a plain tee, I do not think I would have gambled. At $64.95, the only mistake I made was ordering one colour the first time instead of two.

Because here is the arithmetic. Two pieces take twenty percent off the whole order, three take twenty five, four take thirty. Two Hazels in different colours come to less than one tee from a shopping centre that you will keep the cardigan on over anyway, and I know which of those I would rather have hanging up in November.

I read the reviews this time, before I ordered rather than after. 4.7 stars across 935 women, nearly all of them my age, and the same word keeps coming up, which is the word sleeve.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were on my back deck right now with a cup of tea, this is what I would say.

I would say that nobody designs for the tops of a woman's arms, because the people who design tees are thirty and have never had to think about them. Eleanor is not thirty, and she has thought about it, and that is the whole difference between this tee and the drawer full of the others.

I would tell you to start with the white, because you will wear it four days out of seven, and to make the rose your second, because it is the one I now reach for first. I would tell you the red is the one you will be asked about. And I would tell you that the white and the rose thin out first at this price, because that is exactly what happened with the last two pieces I wrote about, and I have no reason to think a third letter will be any different.

Order two colours, not one. Partly for the discount, and mostly because you will be back for the second one anyway, and the postage is the same.

It is September. The cardigan season is ending whether the cardigan likes it or not, and this is the tee I would want hanging up when it does.

Leave the cardigan on the hook.

— Robyn

This is a personal account from a customer of Eleanor & Co. Robyn was not paid to write it. She did receive the tees she ordered.