A letter from a reader

At 67, I stopped saving my good coat for best

You would think a woman of my age has better things to write about than a coat, and until a fortnight ago I would have agreed with you. I am not a writer, and I have never once felt moved to put a piece of clothing on the internet.

But a fortnight ago I went to the garden centre for compost, stopped for a coffee, and two women I had never met leaned over from the next table. One of them said the thing I have been thinking about ever since.

Ooh, are you off somewhere nice, love?

I was not off somewhere nice. I was buying compost, in my everyday coat. And somewhere between explaining that and giving them the name of the boutique, I realised something had gone quietly wrong with how I had dressed for about thirty years.

How it happens

Most women I know own two coats. There is the good coat. Bought for a wedding or a christening, kept for best, worn perhaps six times a year and inspected for rain damage each time like a museum piece.

And there is the everyday coat. The sensible one. The padded, zipped, hooded thing that is warm and practical and makes every single one of us look like we have given up somewhere around the postbox.

The good coat waits for a life of occasions. The everyday coat gets the actual life, the dog, the shopping, the school run, the doctor. We save our best for a diary that never fills up.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong. I assumed a coat that looks like an occasion must be a delicate thing. Thin, fussy, needing care, no good in real weather.

Then I found this one. It is a big, soft, warm coat that happens to be beautiful. Wide rounded lapels, four dark horn buttons sitting low at the front, and a shape that falls easy and unstructured all the way to mid-calf. It shrugs on over a thick jumper without a fight and looks better the more casually you treat it.

It is, in other words, an everyday coat that looks like a best coat. Which makes the whole two-coat system redundant.

Mine is the beige

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

It is called the Ingrid, and mine is the pale beige, a soft oatmeal shade that is lighter and cooler than camel. It sounds like it should be impractical. It has been to the garden centre, the school gates and a very muddy field with the labrador, and it still looks like it belongs at a lunch.

The details are what make it. The lapels are wide and softly rolled rather than sharp, the four horn buttons sit low so the front falls in a long clean line, and the shoulders are cut loose and round so there is room for proper knitwear underneath. There is a matching belt in the box if you want a waist. I wear mine open, which is apparently the elegant way and also the lazy way, and I am at peace with both.

What happened at the garden centre

I wore it open over a roll neck and my brown trousers, because it was Tuesday and it was cold. The two women at the next table asked if I was off somewhere nice, and when I said the garden centre was the whole outing, one of them wrote the boutique name on the back of her receipt.

Since then my daughter has asked to borrow it, which I am treating as the highest form of review, and refused, which I am treating as self-care.

Three things I have learned since

One. It goes over everything. The loose round shoulders mean a thick jumper fits underneath without the sausage effect, and the length covers whatever I am wearing to the knees and beyond.

Two. Smart is not the same as fussy. There is no ironing, no arranging, no checking. It falls the same elegant way however carelessly it goes on, which at my age is very carelessly indeed.

Three. The coat does the outfit. Over jeans, over the dog-walking clothes, over the jumper I should have retired, it makes the whole thing look decided. People assume there is an occasion. The occasion is Tuesday.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me hesitate.

The Ingrid is £59.95 at the moment. It was £120.00.

That is not nothing. But I did the sum I always do now, which is cost per wear. The good coat I saved for best worked out at a scandalous price per outing. This one has been on my back every day since it arrived, which by my arithmetic makes it the cheapest coat I have ever owned.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and 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 if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “I put it on over my gardening clothes to answer the door and got a compliment from the postman.” That was the one that decided it for me.

They do it in beige, brown and black, and I have been talked into believing I need the black as well. By myself.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and count your coats. If there is a good one in the wardrobe waiting for an occasion, and a tired one by the door doing all the work, you are saving your best self for a diary that is not coming. Wear the good coat to buy compost.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the beige and the middle sizes disappear first. It comes in sizes 8/10 to 18/20.

Best is not a date in the diary. Best is Tuesday, if you let it be.

Maggie