A letter from a reader

At 67, I bought a jumper that says SKI, and I have never skied in my life

On Wednesday I went to the matinee with my sister June, who chooses the play and lets me choose the interval ice cream, an arrangement that has survived forty years. I mention this because of what happened before the curtain even went up.

Three different women asked me about my jumper. Two in the interval queue, and one who leaned across an entire row of seats, tapped my arm, and asked the question I have now answered so many times I have a routine for it.

Do you actually ski? Because I love it either way, but I need to know.

I do not ski. I have never skied. And that, it turns out, is the whole joke and the whole point. Here it is, written down once, with photographs.

How it happens

First, some context about my knitwear drawer. It is a serious place. Grey, navy, oatmeal, all very respectable, all chosen by a woman who did not want to be looked at. Roll necks especially were underwear in my house, worn beneath other jumpers, never trusted with a whole outing on their own.

And the closest I have ever come to skiing is going over on the ice outside the butcher’s the winter before last. Nobody gave me a jumper for it. I got a bruise and a small round of applause.

So a grey roll neck with SKI across the chest in big white letters had, on paper, nothing to do with me. Which turned out to be exactly why it worked.

What I had wrong

Here is what nobody had told me. A jumper can be a joke and still be a good jumper, and at our age the joke lands better than it does on the twenty-year-olds it was presumably designed for.

The letters are white with a cornflower-blue shadow, big and unapologetic, and there is a racing stripe down each sleeve like something from a chalet photograph taken before I was born. On a young woman it reads as fashion. On me it reads as wit, because everybody can see perfectly well that I am more of an après-ski woman, and saying so, deadpan, in the interval queue, has now had more outings than some of my coats.

The witty one is the Imogen

Both jumpers in this letter are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now.

The Imogen is the SKI one. A soft mid-grey with flecks through it, a proper tall roll neck you fold over double, deep ribbing at the hem and cuffs, and that shameless lettering. It is warm, it is easy, it goes with jeans and it goes with the navy trousers, and it has not had a quiet outing yet. The grey keeps it grown up. The letters keep it funny. The balance is the whole trick.

The joyful one is the Matilda

Here is the thing nobody tells you about buying one funny jumper. It breaks the seal.

Within the week I had gone back for the Matilda, which is the Imogen’s opposite in every way. Bright turquoise, covered all over in big open circles drawn in little dots, yellow and lime and pale blue, like champagne bubbles sketched by someone in an excellent mood. No joke, no letters, just colour, everywhere, on a woman who spent thirty years in fog. The grey one is wit. This one is joy. I recommend owning both moods.

What happened at the matinee

I wore the Imogen with ordinary jeans, which is to say I made no effort whatsoever, and was asked about it three times before the second act. June, who has watched me dress sensibly since the Coronation, said she barely recognised me, and she meant it as the highest compliment either of us could think of.

Since Wednesday the Imogen has done a market morning and two dog walks, and the Matilda has done a coffee with my neighbour, who ordered one from her kitchen table before the coffee was finished.

Three things I have learned since

One. The joke does the talking. A witty jumper opens more conversations than a beautiful one. People need permission to speak to strangers, and SKI on a Cheshire grandmother is apparently a written invitation.

Two. A roll neck can be the outfit. Folded properly, with jeans, it is one decision that looks finished. Mine spent decades as underwear for other knitwear. It has been promoted.

Three. Buy the wit and the joy together. The grey one for days that need a straight face with a twinkle, the circles one for days that need colour. Between them there is no morning they cannot cover.

About the price

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

The Imogen is £32.95 at the moment, and so is the Matilda, each down from £66.00. Both together cost less than one theatre ticket in the good seats, and they have earned more applause.

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, “I bought the ski one as a joke for myself and it has become the most complimented thing I own. I have still never skied.” A woman after my own heart, and the one that decided it.

They are two of a whole collection of knitted jumpers, and I have been back to look with my sensible head on, which is how I know my sensible head has been outvoted.

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 your knitwear drawer takes itself terribly seriously, buy it one joke. The SKI jumper if you have never skied, all the better if you have not, and then watch how quickly the colourful one follows. Seriousness, it turns out, was never keeping us warm.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the middle sizes disappear first. Both come in sizes 8/10 to 18/20.

I have never skied, and this jumper is the most fun I have had on the flat.

Maggie