A letter from a reader

At 67, I have finally replaced the best jumper I ever owned

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 jumper at the village book swap on Thursday, and one of them got quite emotional about it, which I will explain. So it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

First, a theory I have now tested on every woman I know. Somewhere in your past, there was one perfect jumper.

Mine came from a draughty little shop in the Scottish Highlands, decades ago. I wore it until it fell apart, and I have been comparing every jumper to it since.

Grey, soft as anything, with a ring of pattern knitted round the neck and nowhere else. Every jumper since has lost the comparison. Too smooth, too loud, too thin, pattern shouting from everywhere instead of sitting where it belongs. You do not go looking for the lost jumper. You just quietly never stop.

How it happens

The perfect jumper is always an accident. A holiday purchase, a market stall, a shop that no longer exists. You cannot go back for another, and the high street's answer is always nearly. Nearly the right grey, nearly the right pattern, nearly the right weight.

And nearly, with jumpers, is somehow worse than not at all.

What I had wrong

I had decided they simply did not make them any more. That the soft, patterned-at-the-neck jumper belonged to a previous era of shops, along with proper haberdashers and assistants who knew your name.

It turns out somebody still makes them. It took a small boutique to bother, which no longer surprises me. The trick, I now understand, is restraint. Pattern round the yoke where it frames your face, a whisper of it at the cuffs and hem, and calm everywhere else.

The jumper is called the Solara

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 Solara. A soft marled grey knit with a gentle fuzz to it, and a ring of little dusky-pink and mint diamonds knitted round the neckline, the way the old Nordic jumpers were done, with a matching band above the ribbed cuffs and hem. Below the yoke it is calm, plain grey all the way down.

It is warm without a scrap of heaviness, soft against the neck, and cut relaxed with easy shoulders, so it falls over whatever you put under it. I wear mine over a striped shirt with the collar out and a sliver of cuff showing, because some of us remember how these were worn the first time round.

What happened at the book swap

I wore it to the village book swap on Thursday, where the average conversation is about Ann Cleeves and whose turn it is on teas.

Three women asked about the jumper before I had swapped a single book. And then Christine, holding her paperbacks to her chest, told me about her own lost jumper, bought on a caravan holiday long ago and grieved ever since. She went home and ordered the Solara before supper.

That is not a recommendation. That is a reunion.

Three things I have learned since

One. The yoke is the whole secret. Pattern round the neck and shoulders draws every eye upward to your face, which is precisely where you want every eye. Pattern everywhere else is just noise. The old knitters knew this, and whoever designed the Solara clearly listened.

Two. Soft and light beats thick and heavy. The brushed knit keeps the warmth in without the weight, so it works from the first chilly morning right through winter, indoors and out, without that trussed-up feeling heavy jumpers give you by lunchtime.

Three. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 6/8 right up to a 22/24 in the same relaxed shape, which I wish more places would bother with. And there is a whole small collection of these Fair Isle knits, ten designs, which I am pacing myself through.

About the price

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

The Solara is £39.95. It was £80.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that jumpers like this cost three times that in the little wool shops, and anything under forty pounds would be thin as a vest with the pattern printed on. It is not. The knit is soft and properly dense, the pattern is knitted into the fabric rather than stamped on it, and the ribbing at the collar and cuffs is neat and springy. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is the sale price on their first autumn stock.

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, “It is the jumper I have been describing to shop assistants for half my life. Soft, light, and the pattern is exactly where it ought to be.” That was the one that decided it for me.

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.

If you also lost the perfect jumper somewhere along the way, on a holiday, from a shop that is now a phone shop, stop assuming it is gone for good. Somebody is still making them, quietly, with the pattern in the right place, for under forty pounds.

Not because a jumper will change your life. It will not. But there is something in pulling on a grey knit with a patterned yoke and feeling a draughty Highland shop come back to you for a moment, that I would not have paid three times this for, and got for £39.95.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the first autumn stock is already going. UK 6/8 to 22/24, ten designs in the collection, and once this batch is gone it is gone before the proper cold even arrives.

The lost jumper has been found. Christine can confirm.

Maggie