A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised the walls of my house were dressed better than I was

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But three different women asked me about a jacket at the library this week, in the quiet corner where you are not really supposed to talk at all, and I have now whispered the same answer enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with my sister June, who came round for coffee last month and stood in my hall for a moment with her coat still on. My hall, I should say, is lovely. Her watercolours are up the stairs, there are flowered cushions on the chair by the phone and a jug of dahlias on the windowsill. And on the hooks by the door, a navy coat, a black coat and a grey one.

Your house gets the flowers, Maggie. You get the anorak.

I laughed, and then I looked at those hooks properly, and she was right. I had spent years making sure every corner of my home had something beautiful in it, and I had been walking out of it dressed like the weather.

How it happens

Nobody decides to dress like the weather. It happens quietly, one sensible purchase at a time.

Because here is the thing about outerwear for women our age. The shops sell it in three colours, all of them dark, all of them described as practical or versatile or classic, which are polite words for invisible. If you want warmth, a hood and pockets that zip, you take it in navy and be grateful.

The beautiful things, meanwhile, get hung on walls and printed on cushions and painted on jugs. Things you look at. Never things you wear out in the rain.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the grey one because it is fine. It goes with everything, mostly by matching the sky.

What I had wrong

I had always assumed a truly beautiful coat would have to be a delicate one. Something for looking at, that would sulk in a shower and shiver in October. So when I wanted beautiful I bought another cushion, and when I wanted warm I bought another navy zip up, and it never once occurred to me to ask for both in the same garment.

It turns out that was never a law of nature. It was just that nobody had bothered to make it for us.

Mine is called the Elouera

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

The Elouera is a hooded jacket that zips right up to the chin and comes down to the middle of my thigh, and every inch of it is covered in one continuous painted garden. Golden yellow melting into amber down one side, soft violet blue down the other, little cream blossoms falling from the shoulders like confetti, and a spill of red flowers across the chest. The artwork carries right over the hood, printed so softly into the fabric that from across a room it looks brushed on.

And then there is the inside, which is the part nobody believes until they touch it. The whole jacket is lined with a thick, soft, deep pile, the hood as well, so putting it on feels like being let in on a secret. The hood has proper drawstrings with little metal tips, there are two zipped pockets that keep my keys exactly where I left them, and the zip runs from hem to chin with a second pull at the bottom, so you can sit down in it without a struggle.

What happened at the library

I wore it to change my library books, with old jeans and no effort whatsoever. Three different women asked me about it, each one leaning in and whispering, because that is how confessions are taken in the quiet corner. The lady behind the desk made it four, and she did not whisper at all.

June was with me, and June has never once commented on anything I have worn in fifty years of being my sister. She kept glancing at it across the table until she finally gave in and asked where it came from. I have decided to treasure that.

On the way back to the car the drizzle started, and I put the hood up, and the plush inside came up warm around my ears, and I stood there feeling smug about weather for the first time in my life.

Three things I have learned since

One. The artwork does all the dressing up. Jeans and a plain top underneath and you are done. When the jacket looks like a painting, the rest of the outfit only has to behave itself.

Two. The hood is not decoration. It is lined with the same thick soft pile as the body, it has proper drawstrings, and it has already seen off two showers and one bitter school run. No umbrella, no scarf, no fuss.

Three. Pretty does not have to mean precious. It zips to the chin, the pockets zip too, and it shrugs off a damp field with the labrador as happily as a coffee morning. I stopped saving it for best on the second day.

About the price

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

The Elouera is £52.95 at the moment. It was £106.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for one of the navy coats it has just replaced, and nobody has ever whispered a question about a navy coat.

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 run a sale to move the season’s stock along.

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, “Strangers stop me in the street to talk about it, and my daughter has already tried to borrow it.” That was the one that decided it for me.

There are other artworks in the collection as well, and I have been back to look at them more than once, which tells you everything about where this is heading.

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 stand in your hall and look at your coat hooks. If what you see is a row of dark sensible things that could belong to anybody, and the prettiest items you own are all nailed to the wall, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this.

Not because a jacket will change your life. It will not. But there is something in wearing a beautiful thing out of the house, instead of dusting it, that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the middle sizes disappear first. It comes in sizes 8/10 to 20/22, the same easy cut the whole way up.

My house is still full of beautiful things. Now one of them comes out with me.

Maggie