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Been a long time since I did a Frock Tale, and I’m kinda busy at the mo so I thought it would be fun to have a quick delve into the closet and find another of my favourite dresses.

This one is a little contentious actually – I *utterly* love this frock, it ticks boxes in my head that I didn’t know where there. But the reasons that make it tick, well, certain fetishes of mine also, interestingly, make it one of the less favoured looks.

Pictured – age-appropriate dress and hair, ageing husband with gout not shown 😉

But before we examine that, let’s talk about the frock. It’s a lovely (and as of January 2019 very cheap) Joanie Clothing day dress, with the odd name of ‘Artha’ (https://joanieclothing.com/product/artha-floral-stripe-tea-dress/). It’s a mid-length dress, the top of which is a very 1980s style blouse look and feel, the bottom a flowing skirt. The fabric is interesting, very smooth and stain-y but with little give, which feels great on. It has very small buttons which are a giggle to try and do up with any nails on, and, again, a 1980s style white collar.

On the whole it’s a lovely piece of femininity, taking the essence of a masculine shirt and completely feminising it.

Pictured – a 49 year old man….

It’s also seriously mumsy. This is not a dress that trendy women in the age range of 20-40 would wear out of choice. It feels like a casual dress a mature woman would wear around the house, tidy enough to be formal and comfy enough to spend a lot of time in it.

So why do I love it so much, and why do admirers, on the whole, not like it that much?

It’s an easy answer for me. This is exactly the dress that middle-aged women were wearing in the 1980s. It could almost be a Laura Ashley number, the same kind of ‘Princess Diana’ style fashion that was huge around the mid-Eighties.

I love it so much that it has been used in three separate sessions, in three different scenarios.

I first tried it when I did the Apartment session – we used a short wig, which I call the ‘Jane Fonda’ hair, and after doing twenty minutes or so of posing we called an end to the session, and I spent the next couple of hours in the Apartment dressed and behaving as a middle-aged housewife.

Pictured – including some shots in the bedroom. And yeah, this picture has had some ‘did she bite the pillow when her husband joined her’ comments.

It was bliss. It’s one of the things I find hard to explain to people who don’t understand the love of cross-dressing – the longer you spend in the role, the make-up and the clothes, the more natural and normal it feels. After two hours I was sitting, legs crossed in a prim and proper way, watching a rom-com movie and, yes, having a little cry. It’s as if your body and mind starts to adapt to the role.

The second session we did was a proper photo-shoot at Cindy’s place, again with the short hair but in a situation where we could pose her in a lot more fun ways. Interestingly, as this was the day after the apartment session, the dress smelt of Chanel No.5, and the instant we did the buttons up I flicked back into middle-aged Sarah mode immediately, and the first couple of photos were mind-blowing. I looked completely different to myself, and my usual feminine self.

Pictured – can you say ‘submissive house mouse wife’?

I called it the ‘Bank Manager’s Wife’ look as the woman in the mirror looked slightly stuck-up and full of herself, which again ticked a number of my fetish boxes.

Plus I was the spitting image of my mother, which again is a major mind-f*ck, especially when the static image of your mother in the mirror smiles when you smile.

Pictured – so much like my biological mother that I expect her to frown, ask me when I will cut my hair, then lecture me on taking appropriate care of my wife.

The third and final, for now, session was different – we did the frock as before but used my favourite ‘Phoebe’ wig, The results were very interesting, it immediately took ten or so years off of her appearance, but I loved the dichotomy of the attractive woman and the mature way of dressing.

Pictured – Sarah wearing her mum’s dress 😉

So, why is it that I find this dress, and the looks we created, some of my goto pictures for when I want to blow my mind on how different I can look, yet admirers find it not attractive?

I think it’s because the dress is a mature-fashion frock. There’s a horrible behaviour in society at the moment around women of a certain age – when a man reached late middle-age, goes grey and starts to show the beginnings of old age, he is seen as being dignified. Women? They become invisible. I’ve talked to a number of women of a certain maturity and it’s an unwanted but sadly real situation where women get ignored when they reach a certain age.

I think this look, especially with the short hair, makes Sarah fall into that age range.

But again, I love it, because it lets me explore a part of me that is very, very far from my biological definition. Plus the dress is gorgeous to wear, formal and tight in all the right places, flouncy and flowing in others. Plus the idea of being a middle-aged housewife as opposed to the drab over-achiever I am? Deliciously fun and naughty.

Anyway, if you’re reading this around the middle of January 2019 and it does the same think for you that it does for me, it’s currently on sale for £15…… Go grab yourself a mature frock, you’ll love it.

Stay beautiful and true to yourself, whatever your age or your fetish……

Pictured – and who says you can’t flaunt it in a mature frock?