A letter from a reader

At 68, I owned six cardigans, and every one of them had been bought for being sensible

The last thing I wrote for anybody else to read was a note to the window cleaner about the side gate, and he still got it wrong. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on in the morning.

But three women asked me about my cardigan at a local-history talk on Tuesday evening, one of them in the middle of the slides, and I have explained it over the garden wall enough times since that it seemed easier to write it down once.

It started in September. My sister June was sat at my kitchen table, and in the middle of telling me about her hip she leant across and did up the top button of my cardigan for me, the way you would for a child going out in the cold. Then she noticed it did not match the others, and she looked at me over her glasses and said it.

Pat, love, you dress like the minutes of a meeting.

I laughed, because it was funny. Then I went upstairs and opened the drawer. Six cardigans. Navy, oatmeal, navy again, a brown one I had forgotten I owned, another oatmeal, and a grey one gone bobbly at the elbows. All with the same brown plastic buttons, apart from the one that went down the side of a bus seat. Not one of them bought because I liked it. Every one bought because it would go with things and would not show the dirt.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if you have a drawer like mine. Nobody sets out to dress like a set of minutes. It happens one sensible cardigan at a time.

How it happens

When I worked on the counter at the building society I had a cherry-red cardigan I wore until the cuffs went. People used to say they could see me from the door.

What changed was not me. It was what they put on the rails.

Go into any shop in town and look at the cardigans they think a woman of my age is after. The colours of a filing cabinet. Buttons that look like they came off a school blazer. Shapes that drop at the front by the second wash. And every label says classic, which as far as I can tell means nobody had an idea.

So you buy the navy one because it is fine. You wear it to everything. Nobody says a word, and after a while you stop expecting them to.

What I had wrong

June thought I needed colour. She has been telling me to wear red since about the time I stopped.

So I tried. I put on a red cardigan in a shop in town and felt like a pillar box with a handbag. It went straight back on the hanger.

It turns out the colour was never the problem.

The problem was that nothing about any of them had been chosen. The shape had been an afterthought, the buttons had been an afterthought, and the whole thing had been designed to be put on and not noticed. That is what makes a cardigan look tired. Not the grey. The lack of thought.

A grey cardigan with a bit of thought in it reads completely differently from a grey cardigan with none. It took me until 68, and a dinner-table remark from my little sister, to work that out.

The cardigan is called the Gemma

It was June who found it, which I will never hear the end of. She turned up the following Sunday in a red one with little gold hearts down the front and said nothing at all, which for June is a speech.

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The cardigan is called the Gemma. I was not going from navy to pillar box in one jump, so I ordered the grey. A soft grey knit, a deep V-neck, a proper ribbed hem and ribbed cuffs, and four little gold hearts for buttons.

It is soft, and it is cosy without being bulky, so it sits under my coat and does not turn me into a sofa. The fit is relaxed and it hangs straight instead of dropping at the front. It is light enough for these in-between autumn days and warm enough for a draughty hall of an evening. And it is easy to look after, which at my age is a feature, not a footnote.

The hearts are small. I want to say that, because I can hear some of you thinking it. They are not costume jewellery and they do not jangle. They are just enough to make it look like somebody thought about it, which is precisely what my drawer had been missing.

What happened at the history talk

I go to the local-history group on a Tuesday evening. It meets in the upstairs room at the old Mechanics' Institute, which has lovely tall windows and a radiator that has not worked since about the Coronation. This month was the old Leeds trams, and it ran a good twenty minutes over.

The woman next to me leant over during the slides and whispered where was it from. The lady doing the urn asked at the break, while she was pouring. And Glenys, who has run the group for twelve years and has never remarked on anything but the attendance, looked me up and down by the coats and said I looked like I had come to give the talk, not sit through it.

From Glenys, that is a vote of thanks.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I did not think about it. That room is cold and I kept it buttoned the whole evening, and I did not once feel like I was sat there in a dressing gown. I forgot I had it on until somebody mentioned it.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk Wilf round the park, over a plain top and my old trousers, and felt like myself in it. A woman by the bandstand smiled at me, which may have been the cardigan and may have been the spaniel. I am taking it either way.

Three things worth knowing

One. The sizing is honest. It goes from a UK 8 to a 24, and it is the same cut the whole way up, not a different shape once you get past a certain number. I am a 16 and it sits as it should.

Two. It goes over everything. Jeans and a plain top for the shops, my good trousers for Sunday lunch, a dress if you are that way inclined. It has the relaxed fit that layers without making a fuss about it.

Three. Grey is allowed. You do not have to go and buy the pillar box. It comes in red, pink and purple if you want them, and white and black as well. But if you are a grey and navy woman like me, the grey one with the gold hearts is the gentle way in.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because the price is what made me suspicious.

The Gemma is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that in town for a cardigan that was shapeless by Christmas.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, with no department store in the middle taking its cut, and they have a sale on to move the autumn stock while the weather turns.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Mixed enough to sound like real people, so I read on. A woman from Hedon had written that she bought the grey for her sister and ended up keeping it, and ordering her sister another. That sounded about right to me.

Then I ordered the black as well. For funerals and the Christmas do.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a cup of tea, and June had gone home, this is what I would tell you.

If you have a drawer full of cardigans you did not choose so much as settle for, and you put one on every morning without looking, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a cardigan is going to change your life. It will not. But there is something in doing up your buttons in the morning and liking what you see that I had let go of without noticing, and I would rather you did not let go of it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which June found out when the 12/14 in red had gone by the time she went back for her daughter. And the first autumn stock never hangs about once the cold weather arrives.

The odd button is in the button tin. It is staying there.

Pat