A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised nothing I owned had ever made anybody smile

Let me be honest with you before we start. Nothing like this has ever come from my pen before, I am no writer, and telling other women what they should wear is not something I make a habit of.

But three different women asked me about a jumper in the bakery queue on Saturday morning, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with my sister June, in the café by the garden centre last month. She arrived in a jumper with a little robin on the front, and my very first thought, and I am not proud of it, was that she could not possibly wear that at her age. Then I watched. The waitress smiled at it. The woman at the next table said her granddaughter would love it. June sat there having a lovely time, and I sat opposite her in navy, as usual, being no trouble to look at whatsoever.

I must have said some of that out loud, because June put her cup down and looked at me.

At our age, Maggie, you have earned the right to wear what makes you smile.

I thought about that all the way home. I went through the wardrobe that evening, and there was not one single thing in it that anybody had ever smiled at. Navy, grey, brown, black. Forty odd hangers of clothes chosen, every one of them, to go unnoticed. And the worst part is that it had worked.

How it happens

Nobody decides to dress like that. It happens quietly.

You buy sensible things because sensible things are what the shops put in front of women our age. Rail after rail of the same safe shades, cut not to draw attention, described as classic or versatile, which we all know by now is a polite way of saying forgettable. Anything with a bit of wit in it is three aisles away, cut for a teenager, in a fabric you can see through.

So the choice seems settled before you get to the till. You can dress properly for your age, or you can wear something with a little joy in it. It always seemed I could have one, never both. And once you believe that, the joy leaves the wardrobe one sensible purchase at a time, and nobody smiles at anything you wear for twenty years, and you tell yourself that was never the point of clothes anyway.

What I had wrong

I assumed playful meant childish. That was my whole objection to June’s robin, and it fell apart the moment I looked at it properly.

What makes a thing look childish is not the print. It is everything around the print. A cartoon on a thin cheap tee shirt looks like fancy dress. But one small, quiet joke on a proper, soft, grown up jumper, in calm colours a grown woman would choose, reads completely differently. It reads as wit. It says the woman wearing this chose it, and knows exactly what she is doing. That distinction took me until 67 to work out, and a robin to teach me.

The jumper is called the Kirsten

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

It is a soft, roomy jumper in two colours, a pale powdery blue on top and cream below, with a clean line across the middle where they meet. And lying along that line, fast asleep as if it were a shelf put there for the purpose, is a little black cat. Head on its paw, tail hanging down into the cream. It is one small dry joke, beautifully done, on an otherwise perfectly calm jumper. They do the same sleepy cat in ten colours.

I should own up to something here. I am a dog woman. There is a labrador asleep in the next room as I write this, and he has sniffed the cat once, decided it is no threat, and gone back to sleep. June finds the whole arrangement funnier than I do.

The rest is quietly right. It has that soft texture you normally only get in the things you would never answer the door in, and a relaxed roomy shape that asks nothing of you. It goes over jeans or leggings without a moment of thought, and when the weather turns it is exactly the layer a cold morning wants.

What happened in the bakery queue

I wore it into the village on Saturday morning to fetch the bread, with my jeans, and I made no effort whatsoever. The queue in the bakery was out the door, as it always is on a Saturday.

Three women asked me about it before I reached the counter. The lady in front of me turned round and said the cat had been making her smile since the door. Another asked where it was from and whether the colours came up as nice as they looked, and would not believe the answer to either. And the girl behind the counter, who cannot be more than twenty, leaned over the buns and said it had made her whole morning.

I have stood in that queue most Saturdays for years. Nobody had ever said a word about anything I was wearing. I walked home with the loaf under my arm feeling, and I am aware of how daft this sounds, like a slightly different woman than the one who had walked down.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8/10 all the way to a 22/24, and it is the same relaxed shape the whole way up, not a different jumper once you pass a certain number. I wish more places would bother with that.

Two. It is the comfortable option in disguise. It feels like the soft old things I used to hide in at home, and reads like something chosen. I have worn it for a whole Sunday with the kettle going and then straight out to the shop, and nothing about it needed changing, holding in or thinking about.

Three. People talk to you. Not every day, and not crowds. But the cat starts something, a smile, a word in a queue, a granddaughter pointing. After twenty years of clothes that made me invisible, I had forgotten clothes could do the opposite, and I find I like it far more than I expected.

About the price

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

The Kirsten is £31.95. It was £64.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay more than that on the high street for a plain navy jumper that nobody will ever smile at. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run the sale to move the season’s stock while the cold weather is still in front of us.

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, “Wore it to collect my grandchildren and it was the first time my clothes have ever been a talking point. Wonderfully soft too.” That was the one that decided it for me.

June is getting the green one for her birthday, and I am aware that this is how it spreads.

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.

Try to remember the last time something you wore made somebody smile. If you can, wonderful, you need nothing from me. But if you have to reach back past twenty years of navy to find it, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this jumper. Not because a cat on a jumper will change your life. It will not. But June was right, and it took me far too long to hear it. At our age you have earned the right to wear what makes you smile.

Two practical things. The sale is on now and the first autumn stock is already going, so the middle sizes will disappear first. And if, like me, you are a dog household, I can report the arrangement works out fine.

I have stopped dressing to go unnoticed.

Maggie