A letter from a reader

At 68, I had spent eleven winters in four layers before my grandson asked why I was dressed like a parcel

Brian asked me what I was doing at the kitchen table with a pen at nine o’clock at night, and when I told him I was writing to strangers about a cardigan, he went back to his crossword without a word. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about this one in the queue at the chip shop on Friday night, and I have now explained it so many times that it seemed easier to write it down once, properly.

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise. The heating does not go on in our house before November, and it goes off again the week after Easter, whatever the weather says. So for eleven winters, from the day the clocks go back, I have got dressed in layers. A vest. A blouse. A jumper over that. And my old beige fleece over the lot, zipped to the chin.

I did not think anything of it until last winter, when our grandson Joe came for his tea. He was nine. He watched me come in from the garden and start peeling it all off, one layer after another, and he said it in front of everybody.

Nan, why are you dressed like a parcel?

Brian laughed. Our daughter pretended not to. I laughed too, but I looked in the hall mirror on the way to put the kettle on, and the woman looking back was about three sizes bigger than me and the shape of a sofa cushion. He was nine, and he was right.

I will not pretend I chose to look like that. Nobody sets out to spend half the year bundled up like something waiting at the sorting office. It creeps up on you one cold morning at a time, one more layer at a time.

How it happens

I was never a frump. When I was courting Brian I had a camel coat with a belt that I thought was the smartest thing in Leeds, and I still think I was right.

What changed was not me. It was the shops, and I suspect a good many of you will know exactly what I mean.

Look at what they sell a woman my age for keeping warm. On one rail there are thin little cardigans that are lovely in a shop with the heating on full and no use at all in a kitchen in January. On the other there are great chunky knits and fleeces that keep you warm and make you look like you have come to fix the boiler. Nothing in between. Warm, or a shape. Pick one.

So you do what I did. You wear the thin one, and then something over it, and then something over that, and you stop looking in the hall mirror.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had most wrong.

I thought warm meant thick. I thought the more I had on, the warmer I would be, and that looking like a parcel was simply the price of not paying the gas board.

It was my sister June who put me right, and she did it without meaning to. She came for Sunday dinner in October, took her coat off in the hall, and underneath it she had one neat knitted cardigan over a plain top. That was all. She sat in my front room, which I will admit is not the warmest room in Yorkshire, and she was perfectly comfortable. I sat opposite her in four layers and still had my hands round my mug.

She looked at me for a long moment and said, Pat, love, you do not need all that on. You need one good thing.

It had honestly never occurred to me. Warm or a shape. I had spent eleven winters choosing warm, and it took me until 68 to find out I was allowed both.

The cardigan is called the Ruth

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique I have bought a few bits from for a while now. June had found hers there, and I went and looked that same evening, mostly to prove her wrong.

It is called the Ruth. A soft grey knit with a fine rib running all the way down it, a neat round neck, long sleeves and a straight, relaxed shape that sits on the hip. It comes in black and a warm brown as well, which I will come back to.

The knit is soft, which was the first thing I noticed, and it is warm without being bulky, so there is one layer where there used to be four. It breathes, too, so I am not cooking the minute I walk into somebody’s front room, which was the other thing the fleece always did to me.

The fit is relaxed without being a sack. You can see there is a woman under it, and I can still lift my arms to reach the top shelf. It goes over a plain T-shirt with jeans, or over a blouse and good trousers for church, and it has been through the wash with no fuss at all.

There is nothing clever about it. It is simply a cardigan that does the job on its own, and looks like I chose it.

What happened in the chip shop queue

We have fish and chips on a Friday. Brian stays in the car with the radio on and I go in, and the queue on a cold night is out of the door and halfway to the bus stop.

I wore the Ruth for the first time with a white T-shirt and my jeans, and no coat, which would have been unthinkable a month ago. A woman behind me with a little boy on her hip asked me where it was from before I had got inside. The girl at the counter asked while she was wrapping my haddock.

And the third was Maureen from over the road, who has lived opposite us for eleven years and has not once said a kind word about anything I have worn. She looked me up and down and said, I had forgotten you had a waist, Pat.

From Maureen, that is a bouquet.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I walked back to the car with the chips under my arm and did not once think about being cold. I sat in the passenger seat with the paper warm on my knee and felt, for the first time in a long time, like I had got dressed on purpose.

I had it on again the next morning with my tea on the back step, and on the Monday for the allotment.

Three things I have learned since

One. Buy it for the size you are now. It goes from a UK 8 right up to a UK 24, and the fit is relaxed, so there is no need to size up to fit a jumper underneath. I am a 16 and I took the 16, and there is room for a blouse and nothing else, which is rather the point.

Two. It goes over everything. T-shirt and jeans for the shops, a blouse and my good trousers for church, and once over a dress for June’s birthday lunch. I have not had to buy one new thing to go with it.

Three. Your family will notice before you do. Joe came for his tea last week, looked at me for a while, and said, You have been unwrapped, Nan. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because I am careful with money and I have already told you as much. The price made me suspicious.

The Ruth is £28.95. It was £58.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because the fleece cost me nearly that, and look how that turned out.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on at the moment while the first of the autumn stock comes in.

I do not trust a perfect score, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which is exactly why I read on. One woman from Much Wenlock had written, “I bought the grey for the house and the black for going out, and I have not worn my big cardigan since.”

Then I ordered the black as well, for church.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were sat across my kitchen table with the kettle on, this is what I would say.

If you have been getting dressed like a parcel every winter, piling one thing on top of another and avoiding the hall mirror until spring, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a cardigan will change your life. It will not. But there is something in being warm and still looking like yourself that I had stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the 16 in black had gone by the time I went back and I had to wait for it. And the first of the autumn stock is already going, so I would not leave it until the heating goes on.

I get dressed in one layer now. Joe says I have been unwrapped.

Pat