A letter from a reader

At 67, I needed four layers to leave the house, and my sister looked me up and down and said, Maggie, you look like a game of pass the parcel

If you are expecting something polished, I had better warn you now. I am not a writer, and I have never once been the sort of woman who tells another what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about a jumper at the auction viewing on Thursday, and by the third one I decided it would be quicker to write it all down properly than to keep explaining it by the tea urn.

It started with my sister June. We were going out for lunch, and she let herself in while I was getting ready in the hall. A vest. A blouse over the vest. A cardigan over the blouse. And then the fleece, zipped up to the chin, because the car takes a while to warm up. June stood by the front door with her car keys in her hand, watched me put the whole lot on, and said it.

Maggie, you look like a game of pass the parcel.

I laughed, because it was funny. Then we got to the café, it was warm inside, and I spent the first twenty minutes peeling off layers and hanging them over the back of my chair while June sat there in one grey jumper looking completely comfortable. I felt like the coat stand.

I did not decide to dress like that. Nobody does. You feel the cold a bit more one winter, so you add a layer. Then another. And one October you look in the hall mirror and there is more cardigan than there is you.

How it happens

The trouble is the choice you are given. Go and look in any shop at this time of year. There are thin little tops that would not keep a draught off a biscuit, and there are great thick fleeces and hoodies that are warm but make you look like you are about to go and clean out the shed.

There is almost nothing in the middle. Nothing warm that also looks like you made a decision about it.

So we do the only sensible thing and pile the thin things on top of each other. It works, after a fashion. You are warm. You are also shapeless, and the minute you walk into a warm room you are either too hot or you are standing there taking things off in front of everybody.

Warm, or looking like yourself. For about ten years I thought you had to pick one.

What I had wrong

I thought the answer was a thicker jumper. I had a few, and every one of them was either too hot indoors or so heavy and bulky that I looked twice the size.

It turns out it was never about thickness. It was about being able to change your mind.

A layer that is warm without weighing a ton, that you can open a little when the room warms up and close again when you step outside, does the job of the whole pile. One piece. And if it has a bit of pattern and shape to it, it looks like something you chose, not something you put on to keep the weather out.

The jumper is called the Alice

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

The jumper is called the Alice. It is a soft white jumper with a raised cable pattern running all the way through it, front, back and sleeves, so it has that lovely textured look of a proper cable knit without any of the weight. At the neck there is a short zip with a little silver ring to pull, and it finishes with neat ribbed cuffs and a ribbed band at the hem. June had the grey. I went for the white.

It has what I can only describe as a lightweight warmth. It is soft against your skin, it keeps you warm, and it does not feel like you are wearing a duvet. The fit is regular, so it sits nicely without clinging or swamping.

And the zip is the whole trick. Zipped up to the top, it is snug at the neck on a cold morning. Pulled down a few inches, it opens into a neat little V and the whole thing looks a bit smarter, a bit more like you are going somewhere.

What happened at the auction viewing

Geoff has had his eye on a little oak bookcase, so on Thursday morning we went to the viewing day at the saleroom in town. If you have ever been to one you will know. It is freezing first thing, with the big doors open for the furniture, and by the afternoon it is packed and roasting.

I went in the Alice and my good coat, and nothing else. The coat came off at about half past ten. The zip came down a little after lunch. That was the sum total of my adjusting all day.

A lady looking at a tea set asked me where the jumper was from before we had even found the bookcase. A younger woman with a catalogue asked the same by the paintings. And then Hilda, who has sat on the front desk at that saleroom for longer than anyone can remember and has never said anything to me beyond good morning, looked up as we signed out and said I looked like I had come to buy, not just to look. From Hilda, that is practically a bid.

What I noticed more than any of that, though, was that I did not spend the day thinking about being cold or being hot. I spent it looking at furniture, which is what I had gone for.

The next morning I put it straight back on, zipped right up to the top, and took the labrador round the field. Then I came home, pulled the zip down a little, and sat at the kitchen table with my tea. Same jumper. Nothing to take off.

Three things I have learned since

One. One good layer beats four thin ones. I did not believe this until I tried it. I leave the house in the Alice and a coat now, and I am warmer than I ever was in the pile, and I do not arrive anywhere looking like I have been bundled up for the post.

Two. The zip earns its keep. Up for the cold, down a little for the warm. It sounds like nothing. It means you never have to stand in the middle of somebody's kitchen taking your clothes off.

Three. It layers properly too. On a really cold day it goes over a blouse and the collar sits out neatly at the neck, and it goes under a coat without bunching. The sizing runs from a UK 8 to an 18 and I took my usual size.

About the price

I will be honest, because this was the part that made me suspicious.

The Alice is £27.95. It was £56.00.

My first thought was that at that price the pattern would flatten after one wash, or it would be thin as a tea towel. You can pay more than that on the high street for a jumper that has gone out of shape by Christmas.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they have a sale on while the first autumn stock comes through.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and read the reviews first. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman from Petworth had written, ‘I bought the white thinking it would be too good to wear, and I have not had it off since.’ That was very nearly me.

Then I ordered the blue one as well. It is a proper deep blue, not the washed-out sort, and Geoff says it is the first thing he has seen me in for years that he actually noticed.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in my kitchen, and you had just hung three cardigans over the back of my chair to get comfortable, this is what I would say.

Count the layers you put on to go out tomorrow. If it is more than two, and you still do not feel quite right in any of them, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this one.

Not because a jumper will change your life. It will not. But walking into a warm room and not having to do anything about it, and looking like yourself while you do it, is a small daily pleasure I had quietly given up on.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first autumn stock is usually gone before the cold weather has even properly arrived.

I leave the house in one layer now, and I still get there warm.

Maggie