A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised nothing I owned had a shoulder in it

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 blazer at my old office reunion lunch, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with the invitation. Twenty five years since the office closed, lunch in town, everyone welcome. I opened my wardrobe to find something that said I had been getting on fine, thank you, and I made a discovery.

Nothing I owned had a shoulder in it.

Cardigans. Jersey. Drape. Stretch. Waterfall this and relaxed that. Rail after rail of soft, and not one single thing that stood up on its own. Somewhere in the last ten years, without my permission, my entire wardrobe had gone quietly limp.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to go soft. The shops steer us there, one comfortable purchase at a time, until the day you need to look like somebody and find you own nothing with a spine.

How it happens

Look at what is sold to women our age. Comfort, ease, drape, forgiveness. All lovely words, and I own a wardrobe full of them.

But structure went missing somewhere. Tailoring became something for barristers and weather presenters. And the strange result is that a generation of women who wore proper jackets to work every day for thirty years now do not own one.

You do not notice it going. You only notice the day you need it back.

What I had wrong

I had assumed a blazer would feel like going back to work. Stiff, formal, a costume.

It turns out that is backwards.

A good blazer is not formal at all. It is a frame. You hang it over the plainest things you own, a white top, ordinary jeans, and the shoulders and the waist do all the standing up straight on your behalf. The outfit underneath can stay as comfortable as it likes.

The blazer is called the Augustine

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

The blazer is called the Augustine. A warm beige and brown herringbone, with proper notch lapels, one bronze button at the waist, and neat rows of little bronze buttons at the cuffs. The herringbone is the clever part. It reads as something with a history, the jacket of a woman with a house in the country, rather than something that arrived in a plastic mailer, which I can confirm it did.

The shoulders are structured without being stiff, so you stand differently the moment it is on. The single button nips it in at the waist, which gives you a shape without squeezing one out of you. It is properly lined, so it slides on over anything, and the two front pockets are real pockets that hold real things, which in my experience is never to be assumed.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a jacket somebody cut properly.

What happened at the reunion

I wore it to the lunch over a plain white top, with my good trousers.

Three women asked me about it before the starters. One of them was Kath, who sat beside me for eleven years and has known me through every haircut since 1987.

She told me I looked exactly like myself. I have been thinking about that all week, because she is right, and it had been a while.

What I noticed more than the compliments was how I sat. Shoulders back, chin up, without once deciding to. A jacket with structure does your posture for you, and after ten years of cardigans I had forgotten what that felt like.

The next morning I threw it on over a t-shirt and jeans for the market, and it was just as right for that. Better, if anything.

Three things I have learned since

One. The shoulders are the whole trick. Everything underneath can be soft and comfortable, because the frame on top does the standing up straight. My cardigans have not been demoted. They have been given a manager.

Two. Herringbone forgives everything. It goes with jeans, with navy, with my brown boots, with a dress. And because the texture is doing the talking, nobody looks at whether the top underneath is five years old. It is.

Three. One button is easier than three. Done up, you have a waist. Open, it swings. There is no fiddling and no wrong way to wear it, and the little cuff buttons make it look far dearer than it was.

About the price

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

The Augustine is £68.95. It was £138.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that a structured, lined, herringbone blazer at that money would turn out to be structured the way a paper bag is structured.

It is not. The shoulders hold, the lining is proper, and the buttons are metal, not painted plastic. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is the launch 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, “The shoulders are the thing. I put it on over a t-shirt and looked dressed for the first time in years.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat over coffee and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and count the things in your wardrobe that could stand up without you in them. If the answer is none, you do not need a new wardrobe. You need one jacket with its shoulders on, and everything soft you already own gets promoted with it.

Not because a blazer will change your life. It will not. But there is something in catching sight of yourself and seeing the woman who used to run that office that I had quietly filed away, and I would rather you did not file yours away either.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the first autumn stock is already going. Three colours, from a UK 6/8 to a 16/18, and once this batch is gone it is gone before the cold weather even arrives.

My wardrobe has a spine again.

Maggie