A letter from a reader

At 68, I worked out the part of every cardigan I hated was the sleeves

I have spent fifty years shoving cardigan sleeves up my arms, and I only noticed last month.

I am not one for writing letters to shops. But three different women asked me about this waistcoat at the harvest supper, and I have now explained it enough times that writing it down once seemed the sensible option.

Count up your day sometime. The washing up. The weeding. Kneading a loaf, wiping a bench, reaching into the back of a cupboard, driving. Every one of those jobs gets done with your sleeves shoved up around your elbows, and every twenty minutes they slide back down and you shove them up again.

The sleeves were the problem. It took me until 68 to see it.

Because the alternative was worse. Take the cardigan off and you are cold. Keep it on and your cuffs are in the sink by ten and damp until bedtime. Fifty autumns of that, and I never once thought to question the arrangement.

It was my neighbour who put me right, without meaning to. She was over the fence in a cream waistcoat one sharp morning, pegging out washing with her arms bare to the wrist, looking warmer than I was.

The choice nobody questions

The shops offer women our age two warm layers. The cardigan, which brings its sleeves and all their nuisance with it. Or the big padded gilet, which is cut for hiking up a mountain and makes everybody look like a wardrobe.

Warm and irritated, or warm and shapeless. That was the whole menu, and like most women I picked the cardigan and put up with the sleeves, because at least it looked like clothing.

What I had wrong

I thought a waistcoat was a bit of styling. Something off the telly, for women who drink their coffee out of very small cups.

It is not styling. It is engineering.

Your body is what needs keeping warm. Your arms need to be free, because your arms are how you do everything. A waistcoat is simply the honest answer to that, and men in flat caps have known it for a hundred years while we were shoving our sleeves up.

The waistcoat is called the Matilda

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

The waistcoat is called the Matilda. A soft cream one in that cuddly teddy texture, with a neat V at the front and five little bronze buttons down it. It looks a good deal dearer than it is, which I will come to.

It buttons up, so it stays put when you bend instead of swinging about like an open gilet does. It comes down over the hips, so your back and middle are covered when you are stooping at the sink or the border. And it is light. There is no bulk to it at all, so it goes over a roll neck or under a coat without turning you into a parcel.

That is the whole of it. It is not complicated. It is a warm layer somebody thought about.

What happened at the harvest supper

I wore it over my white roll neck to the harvest supper, with brown trousers.

Three women asked me about it before the pie was served. One of them was Doris, who has sat opposite me at that supper for fifteen years and never once passed comment on my clothes.

She asked me if it was new. That is Doris for I want one.

What I noticed more than the compliments was the serving. Passing plates, pouring tea, carrying dishes through, all of it with my arms entirely my own. Not one sleeve shoved up all evening. You do not notice a nuisance until it stops.

The next morning I had it on over my gardening shirt to lift the last of the beetroot, and it was just as right for that.

Three things worth knowing

One. Buttoned beats open. The five little buttons are the difference between a layer that works with you and a flapping gilet. Done up, it holds the warmth in and stays exactly where you put it, bending, stooping, driving.

Two. It smartens things you already own. Over a plain roll neck and trousers it reads as an outfit somebody planned. The cream with the bronze buttons looks a good deal more expensive than £24.95, and I have decided not to correct anyone.

Three. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8/10 to an 18/20 in the same relaxed shape, and it comes in the cream, a brown and a khaki. The cream is the one people comment on.

About the price

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so the price was the first thing I checked.

The Matilda is £24.95. It was £50.00.

My assumption was that at under twenty five pounds the texture would be thin and mean, because the teddy sort usually is at that money.

It is not. It is dense and soft right through, with a smooth lining inside, and the edges are properly bound rather than left raw. They are a small boutique selling directly, no department store taking a slice in the middle, and this is the launch price on their first autumn stock.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before ordering. Just over three hundred of them at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people, so I read on. One woman had written, “I wear it over everything from a jumper to my gardening shirt. Warm where it matters and my arms are free. I have hardly had it off.” That settled it.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

I would put the kettle on and say this.

If you spend every day from September to April shoving your sleeves up to do the next job, that is not a habit. That is a design fault, and it is not yours. It is the cardigan's. Twenty five pounds fixes it.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the first autumn stock is already going. Three colours, UK 8/10 to 18/20, and once this batch has gone it has gone before the proper cold even arrives.

My sleeves are down for the first autumn in fifty years.

Pat