A letter from a reader

At 68, I replaced five coats with two, and the coffee morning noticed

On Thursday mornings there is coffee at the church hall, which is officially about fellowship and unofficially about who has brought the good biscuits. I mention this because of what happened on Thursday.

Three different women asked me about my coat before I had got my cup filled. And when I admitted there were actually two of them at home, and that between them they had emptied half my hallway, Susan put down her custard cream and said the thing I have been repeating all week.

Two coats. You are telling me the answer was two coats. I own nine.

Nine. We counted later, it was actually eleven. So here is the answer, written down once, with photographs of both.

How it happens

First, the arithmetic of my hallway as it stood last month. Five coats. The anorak, which did everything badly. The good coat, too good for Tuesdays, worn four times a year. And three others, bought in sales for versions of me that never turned up, serving life sentences on their pegs.

Five coats, and every single morning ended in the anorak, because the anorak asked no questions. A hallway full of options and nothing to wear. If that sentence feels familiar, keep reading.

What I had wrong

Here is what nobody had told me. The problem was never too few coats. It was that not one of them was actually right, so I kept buying more almosts. What a wardrobe needs is not five almosts. It is two exactlys.

The weekday exactly, smart enough to lift the errands, easy enough to wear without ceremony. And the occasion exactly, the one that makes an effort so you do not have to. Once I framed it that way, I threw the budget at two coats and stopped.

The weekday one is the Jessica

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

The Jessica is a proper trench, the real article. Warm khaki, wide honest lapels, a double row of buttons, the little shoulder tabs and the storm flap across the chest, all the trench furniture your eye expects. And the belt is the part that changed my mind about my own reflection. You knot it, no fiddling with a buckle, and the coat pulls in at the waist and takes you up an inch with it. A woman in a knotted trench looks like she has somewhere to be. I mostly have the post office, but the coat does not know that.

The Sunday one is the Mia

Three weeks later, the black one followed, which my husband claims he predicted.

The Mia is the opposite argument. No belt, no flap, no furniture. Just a long, plain, matte black coat with proper lapels, a quietly nipped waist and a fall straight to the calf. It is the coat that makes a supermarket run look like an appointment and a funeral, a lunch or a carol service look effortless. Black, long and well cut answers almost every occasion a woman my age is invited to, which is a thing I wish someone had told me thirty coats ago.

What happened at the coffee morning

I wore the trench to the coffee morning, knotted, over a cream jumper, which is to say I made no particular effort, and got asked about it three times before the urn. Then I mentioned the black one and a small queue formed by the biscuits, which for our church hall is practically a stampede.

Since then the trench has done the market, the bus into town and two school pickups, and the Mia has done a birthday lunch and one entirely unnecessary trip to the garden centre, purely because I wanted the walk from the car park.

Three things I have learned since

One. A knotted belt is a waist. The trench pulls in where a decade of anoraks hung straight down, and the difference in the mirror is not subtle. Knot it, do not buckle it. The knot is the style.

Two. Long, black and plain does every occasion. The Mia has no tricks, which is the trick. It has yet to meet an event it was wrong for, and it makes everything under it look chosen.

Three. Two exactlys beat five almosts. My mornings got faster, my hallway got lighter, and three coats went to the charity shop where some other woman can have her own argument with them.

About the price

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

The Jessica trench is £58.95 at the moment, down from £147.00. The Mia longline is £43.95, down from the same. Both together cost me less than the good coat I wear four times a year cost on its own.

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 trench for best and now it does every day. My other coats have noticed.” That was the one that decided it.

They are both part of a whole collection of autumn and winter coats, and I have been back to look at it since with my sensible head on, which is how I know my sensible head is not to be trusted.

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.

Count your coats, then count the ones you actually wear. If the answer is five and one, the problem is not you. Get the trench for the weekdays and the long black one for everything else, and give the almosts to the charity shop with my blessing.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the middle sizes disappear first. The trench comes in sizes 8/10 to 20/22 and the Mia in 8/10 to 18/20.

Five almosts, or two exactlys. Your hallway already knows which it has.

Patricia