A letter from a reader

I am 68 and the first cardigan I have ever written a letter about was on a woman ringing church bells.

Six things these two zip cardigans get right that fifty years of button cardigans never did, from a woman who spent a cold Thursday night on a bench in a church tower watching one stay put.

Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read

I should tell you who is talking before I start. I am Pat, I am 68, and I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf. I have owned more cardigans than I have owned pairs of shoes, and not one of them ever made me want to sit down and write to anybody. I would have told you a cardigan is a cardigan. Then I watched one go up and down on a woman’s arms for two hours in a church tower, and I had to eat my words.

The cardigans I am writing about are from the printed zip cardigan collection at Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly finding women like me the things we did not know we were allowed to have for a few years now. They zip up the front, they have a little stand-up collar, and the pictures on them are printed. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, as long as I could be honest in it.

I first saw one at the start of November. Brian and I go up for a week every year to his brother Keith in Staindrop, in Teesdale, and Keith rings the bells at the church there. On the Thursday he took us up to practice night. I sat on a bench in the ringing room with my coat done up, because those towers are stone and there is no heating in them. The tower captain is a woman called Enid, well into her seventies, and she rang for the best part of two hours with both arms up over her head. She had on a cream cardigan with butterflies and orange berries all over it, zipped right up to her chin. Every time her arms went up, it stayed exactly where it was. Nothing gaped, nothing rode up, nothing needed tugging. I had her down as somebody who bought her clothes at a gallery shop. The week after, she was in a pale blue one with white flowers. In the pub afterwards, I asked her plainly where they were from.

Both arms up on the rope for two hours. I sat on that bench in my coat and watched it not move.

Here is what fifty years of cardigans taught me. They come in two piles. The warm ones, oatmeal or navy, with a row of buttons, that go baggy at the elbows and gape across the front the minute you reach for anything. And the pretty ones, thin as a hanky, that look lovely on the hanger and leave the back of your neck to the weather.

A cardigan was either something sensible I put on because I was cold, or something nice I took off because I was cold. I had stopped expecting one that would do both.

These are the first I have owned that do. I have had the two of them through a raw November now, and it comes down to six things.

The morning they came, laid out on the bed before Brian could ask what was in the parcel.

1

It is a picture, not just a pattern

The cream one is called the Isolde. On the front there is one big butterfly with two blue eyes on its wings, a smaller striped one beside the zip, big green leaves, and a band of orange and pink berries with twisting stems running round the bottom and down both sleeves. It is printed, and I will say that plainly because the boutique does. But it is printed like a watercolour, soft at the edges, and from across a room, or across a ringing chamber, it looks like somebody painted it for you. I have had more comments on it in a fortnight than on everything else in my wardrobe in a year.

Over the arm of my chair. The big butterfly, the berries, and the little ring on the zip.

★★★★★

My granddaughter asked if I had painted it myself. I did not tell her for a good ten minutes.

Brenda T., Cotherstone

3

A stand-up collar that keeps the draught off

Both of them have a neat ribbed collar that stands up round your neck when it is zipped. The boutique says it keeps the chill off your neck, and that is exactly what it does. I have stopped reaching for a scarf to go to the shops. Zipped to the top with the ring pull just under my chin, it looks finished, which a polo neck under a cardigan never did on me.

First cup of the morning, zipped up to the collar, kitchen still cold. The blue one.

★★★★★

The collar is the best bit. I have not worn a scarf indoors since it came.

Jean W., Piercebridge

5

The blue one is the frost on the window

The second one is called the Rosamund. It is pale powder blue at the shoulders and fades down to nearly white at the hem, with fine white flowers printed across the chest and down the sleeves, the sort of thing you see on a window on a hard morning. Gold zip, blue collar. Where the Isolde is autumn, this one is the run-up to Christmas, and I have worn it with my good grey trousers and with jeans and it was right both times.

Folded on the kitchen table on the first frosty morning. It matched the window.

★★★★★

The blue fading to white is even prettier in real life. I bought it for Christmas Day and I have not waited.

Pauline R., Winston

6

Fourteen designs, every one the same price

There are fourteen designs in the collection, and every one is the same price. Besides my two there is a purple one with dragonflies, a pink blossom, a navy ditsy floral, a houndstooth, a patchwork check, a paisley, a folk tapestry in oranges, a woven stripe, a bright painted one and a few more. They all have the same zip, the same collar and the same ribbed trims, and they go from a UK 8 right up to a UK 22. Enid has four. Keith says she will not ring in anything else now.

The pair of them on the pegs in the hall. Brian says it looks like I have been to an exhibition.

★★★★★

Bought one for myself and one for my sister, different prints. We have both been back for another.

Valerie K., Eggleston

These cardigans, against the ones you have been making do with

You can carry on with a sensible cardigan that gapes or a pretty one that leaves you cold, like I did for fifty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

Every design in the collection is £36.95, down from £74.00, and that is the same price whichever print and whichever size you choose.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are in their sale while the first winter stock goes, and once a print sells through in a size, that is it for that one. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than £74.00 for a plain wool cardigan in a department store that was bobbled by the spring and gaped from the first day, so £36.95 for one I actually look forward to putting on made it an easy yes. Twice.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your cardigan drawer is full of things you put on because you are cold and take off because you are cold, this is where I would start. Have a look at the prints before somebody takes your size in the one you like, because the first winter stock will not wait. And if you are ever in a church tower in Teesdale on a Thursday night and the captain is in butterflies, you will know where I got the idea.

Pat

THE ZIP CARDIGAN COLLECTION

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

£74.00 £36.95

• Fourteen printed designs, including the Isolde and the Rosamund
• Full-length zip with an easy-grip ring pull
• Stand-up collar to keep the chill off
• Ribbed cuffs and hem, relaxed hip length
• UK 8 to UK 22, every design £36.95
• Free UK delivery

See The Zip Cardigan Collection

Sale on now. The first winter stock is already going.