A letter from our founder

For Fifteen Years, I Kept the Beautiful Things for a Day That Never Came

There was a dress at the back of my wardrobe I never wore.

Every so often I would come across it while looking for something sensible, and I would run my hand over it, and then I would close the door and reach for the beige cardigan instead. Beautiful, I would think. But not for me. Not anymore.

Because somewhere along the way I had decided that dresses like that, the ones with lace and a little shimmer, the ones that ask to be noticed, belonged to younger women. That at my age the kind thing to do was to keep things quiet. Sensible. Out of the way.

So the beautiful things stayed on their hangers, saved for a day that somehow never felt like it had arrived.

See the collection

I told myself I was being practical. Where would I even wear it? The truth is I had stopped believing I was allowed to. An occasion dress felt like a claim I no longer had the right to make, that I still wanted to be looked at, that I still wanted to feel lovely, at seventy-one.

Then my granddaughter got married.

I stood in front of that same wardrobe, and for once I did not reach for the safe thing. I took down something in soft blue, with lace at the shoulders, the kind of dress I had spent fifteen years telling myself was not for me. I put it on. And when I looked in the mirror, I did not see an old woman making a spectacle of herself. I saw me. The woman I had quietly packed away, still there, still wanting to be seen.

My daughter Charlotte took one look and welled up. So did I, if I am honest.

That day changed something. I stopped saving the beautiful things. And Charlotte and I decided to build a collection for every woman who has a dress at the back of her wardrobe she is waiting for permission to wear.

These are occasion dresses made for real women, at every age, for the weddings and the birthdays and the ordinary days that deserve a little more. Cut to flatter, easy to wear, and quietly certain that you have every right to be looked at.

Explore the occasion dresses

The day you are saving them for is not coming. It is already here. You are allowed to feel beautiful now, not when you have lost a little weight, not when you are younger, which you will never be again, but now, exactly as you are.

Take the beautiful thing down off its hanger. Put it on. It was always yours.

It was never you.

Warm wishes,
Elaine
Elaine Hart London