The top I reach for in the morning without even thinking about it anymore.

A note from a reader about the easy everyday top from a small Australian label that finally solved the one thing she never had: something simple that still looks like she made an effort.

By Robyn Whitfield · Wollongong, NSW

6 min read

For most of the last ten years I have not owned a single top I could put on without thinking about it.

That sounds like a small complaint. It is not, when it happens every single morning.

Here is what my mornings used to look like. I would open the wardrobe, and there would be the tops that cling, which I will not wear past about nine o'clock because they show every single thing. There would be the tops that ride up, the ones I spend the whole day quietly tugging back down at the waist. There would be the loose ones I bought to escape the first two, which turned out to be so shapeless I looked like I had given up. And there would be the two or three good blouses I keep for when my daughter Sarah comes up from Melbourne, which are far too fussy to wear to the shops.

So I would stand there, sixty one years old, and put on the same tired tunic over leggings, because it was the only thing that did not require a decision. Again.

Three weeks ago a top arrived that broke that pattern, and I have not really stopped wearing it since. It is called the Nell, and it comes from Eleanor & Co, the small Australian label I have written about here before. If you are a woman my age, I think you have been quietly looking for this too.

What it actually is

It is an easy, lightweight everyday top with a soft V neckline and a row of small buttons down the front. Breezy is the word the label uses for it, and breezy is exactly right. It is cut to skim the body instead of grip it, so it gives you a shape without holding onto anything you would rather it did not.

That one difference is the whole thing for me.

It does not cling. And it does not ride up. I can reach into the top cupboard, carry the shopping in from the car, bend over the garden bed, and the hem stays exactly where it is supposed to. I am not standing in front of a shop window pulling at my own waist any more.

It is the first top in years that I put on and then simply forget I am wearing.

And here is the part I did not expect. It looks like I tried.

That is the thing nobody makes for us. Easy usually means shapeless, and pulled-together usually means fussy and warm and uncomfortable. The Nell is the first thing I have found that is genuinely easy to wear and still looks like I put thought into getting dressed. I have worn it to the shops, to an appointment I was dreading, and to a long lunch with my sister, and I did not change a thing in between.

Two of them folded on the chest of drawers now. I reach for one without thinking.

Sarah noticed

After the second week my daughter Sarah rang me from Melbourne.

She said, mum, you look really put together in your photos lately. Did you get something new?

I told her I had bought one top, and that I had been wearing it about every other day.

She laughed and said she could not tell, which is the whole point. It does not announce itself. There is no loud print, no slogan, no fussy detail to date it. It is a quiet, comfortable everyday top in a soft colour, and it makes me look like the version of myself that has her act together.

Honestly, mum, she said. You just look like you, on a good day.

She ordered her own that night. She got hers in the blue.

What changed in three weeks

I had not been looking for a uniform. I had just been quietly dreading getting dressed, the small daily friction of opening a wardrobe full of clothes and finding nothing in it that worked.

The Nell took the decision out of the morning. Three things I noticed in the first week, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember them.

1. It is genuinely cool to wear. Light enough that I stop thinking about the weather, which at my age is no small thing.
2. It skims, it does not cling. It gives me a flattering line without gripping anything, and it does not ride up no matter how much reaching and bending the day asks of me.
3. It works for everything. Dressed down for the shops, a little dressed up for dinner, and I am not changing in between. One top, the whole day.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me ordering. The Nell at $64.95 is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and wrote down what the same top costs when it is not on.

Usually $139.95. Now $64.95. And underneath, in slightly bigger letters, the only thing I could think to write. ...how??

The answer, as far as I can tell, is timing. Eleanor has brought the summer pieces in early and they have landed in the middle of winter, which is the only reason a top like this is sitting at that price in August. It will not be August forever.

I also read the reviews, which I do not always do. 4.7 stars across 935 women, nearly all of them my age, and over and over the same slightly disbelieving note as mine.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were on my back deck with a cup of 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 been quietly handed a bad choice for years now. Either something that clings and shows everything, or something so loose you disappear inside it. The Nell is the sensible middle, easy and comfortable and still pulled together, and it has been a long time since I found one.

I would tell you the grey is the one I reach for most, the blue is the one Sarah ordered, and the green is the one my sister says suits me best. There is a purple as well, for the bolder among you.

I would tell you to buy two. The discount comes off when you do, and if you are anything like me you will end up living in them anyway.

I would tell you that the popular colours thin out quickly at this price, because that is exactly what happened with the last piece I wrote about. The grey and the blue are the two I would not sit on.

If you have, for longer than you would care to admit, wanted to open the wardrobe in the morning and reach for something with relief instead of a sigh, please do not wait on this one.

While the colours are still there.

— Robyn

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