A letter from a reader

At 67, my sister watched me go out in my husband’s old anorak and said, Maggie, you have been wearing Geoff’s coat for ten years

Geoff says that in all the years he has known me I have never written anything longer than a shopping list, and he is right. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it was my job to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about a jacket at my grandson’s cross-country race on Saturday, and I have explained it so many times since that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

It started a few weeks ago. My sister June had come for lunch, and afterwards we were taking the labrador out before the rain came. I went to the hook by the back door, took down the big dark green anorak that has hung there for as long as anyone can remember, rolled the sleeves back twice so my hands would come out of the ends, and zipped it up. June stood on the step and watched me do the whole thing, and then she said it.

Maggie, you have been wearing Geoff’s coat for ten years.

I told her it was a perfectly good coat. And it was. It was just not mine. It was two sizes too big, the cuffs were frayed, it smelled faintly of the shed, and every photograph of me outdoors for a decade showed a small woman lost inside a big green tent. I had not chosen it. I had simply stopped looking for anything else.

Nobody decides to do that. It happens one wet walk at a time. You grab whatever is nearest the door, and before you know it the nearest thing to the door has become the only thing you wear outside.

How it happens

Go and look for a proper outdoor coat for a woman our age and see what you find.

There are the serious ones, covered in zips and toggles, cut for somebody about to walk up a mountain. There are the pretty ones, thin as a cardigan, that would not last ten minutes on a school field in October. And in between there are rails and rails of black and navy and khaki, all perfectly sensible and all looking exactly the same.

So you give up and borrow your husband’s. I know I am not the only one, because I see us every weekend, small women in big men’s coats, walking dogs.

It is not that we have stopped caring. It is that the shops decided a woman out in the cold only needs to be warm, and never thought she might want to look like herself while she was at it.

What I had wrong

I had it fixed in my head that you could have practical or you could have pretty, and at my age, on a cold day, practical had to win.

It turns out that was never the choice. What makes an outdoor coat feel like yours is not whether it is fit for the weather. It is whether it fits you, whether it has any shape to it at all, and whether it is a colour you would actually pick.

A hood that is soft inside, a zip that comes right up to the chin, a cut with enough room for a jumper but not so much you disappear. And then a colour. Put those together and practical and pretty stop being two different coats.

The jacket is called the Rachel

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

The jacket is called the Rachel. Mine is a proper sunshine yellow, with a roomy hood that is soft and cosy inside, two drawstrings to pull it in when the wind gets up, a zip right up to the chin and three little snaps down the front to close it over. It comes in about a dozen other colours as well, which I will come back to.

It sits just below the hip, so it covers everything that wants covering without getting in the way of the car door. The cut is relaxed, so a thick jumper goes underneath without any tugging. And it is easy to keep clean, which with a labrador is not a small thing.

It is a jacket for real autumn days. It just happens to look like somebody thought about the woman inside it.

What happened at the cross-country

My grandson runs for his school, which means that on autumn Saturdays I stand on the edge of a playing field in whatever the sky decides to do. This Saturday it decided on a bitter wind straight off the fields.

Everybody on that touchline was in navy or black. I was in yellow. A mum from my grandson’s class asked me first, before the under-twelves had even set off. Then the lady handing round the squash wanted to know where it was from.

And then Olwen, who has stood beside me at every race for three years and has never once passed comment on anything I have worn, looked me up and down and said it was the first time she had seen me dressed like myself. From Olwen, that is a gold medal.

What I noticed more than any of that was that I was warm and I was comfortable, and I did not feel like I was wearing a tent. The hood went up when the wind came round, and down again when it dropped, and I forgot about it entirely.

The next morning I put it straight back on to take the labrador round the mere. Geoff asked if he could have his anorak back. I told him he was welcome to it.

Three things I have learned since

One. A hood that is nice inside makes all the difference. I used to dread putting a hood up. This one is soft and cosy, so I actually put it up instead of standing there getting cold out of stubbornness.

Two. Colour on a grey day is not frivolous. I thought I would feel silly in yellow. Instead I feel cheerful, and so, it turns out, does everybody who sees me coming.

Three. The sizing is honest. It runs from a UK 8 all the way to a 24, and it is the same relaxed cut the whole way up. I took my usual size and there is room for a proper jumper underneath.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because the price was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Rachel is £42.95. It was £86.00.

My first thought was that at that price it would be flimsy, the sort of thing that looks fine in a picture and gives up the first time it meets a hedge. You can pay a great deal more than that on the high street for an outdoor coat in navy that you will never love.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so nobody is taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on while the first autumn stock comes through.

I did what I expect you are doing now and read the reviews first. 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 from Towcester had written, ‘I have not worn my husband’s coat since it came, and he is thrilled about that too.’ I laughed out loud, because that is our house exactly.

Then I ordered the red one for June. She had it on before she had finished reading the card.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were stood on the edge of that playing field together, stamping our feet and waiting for the runners to come round, this is what I would say.

Go to the hook by your back door and look at what is hanging on it. If the coat you go out in on cold days is somebody else’s, or something dark and sensible you would never have chosen, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this one.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first autumn stock is usually gone before the cold weather has properly arrived.

Geoff has his anorak back. I did not need it after all.

Maggie