A letter from a reader

First I dressed like my mother. Then I dressed like my daughter. At 64, the answer was my father's old jacket.

I have never written anything like this before, but people keep asking whether my jacket used to be my father's, and the true answer is longer than a checkout line.

So here it is, the long way.

Getting dressed after sixty, it turns out, has two ways to go wrong. You can turn into your mother, or you can turn up in your daughter's clothes. I managed both inside one year, and the way out had been zipped in a garment bag in our hall closet for seventeen years.

It started on a Tuesday last October. I was carrying my grandson's birthday box into the post office in town, and as I pushed on the glass door, a woman came toward me from the other side. Navy zip-up fleece. Pleated khaki slacks. White walking shoes with Velcro straps.

For one whole second I thought, "Mom?" She has been gone eleven years.

It was my reflection, of course. I had turned into my mother so gradually that I never noticed, and a post office door told me in one second.

So I went the other way, and I went fast. My daughter Kristen is forty-one, and every time I saw her that fall she had on a cream teddy-bear fleece jacket, the fluffy kind, with big white platform sneakers. She looked wonderful in them. So I bought the same jacket in the same cream, and the same sneakers, and I wore them to Friday night dinner at her house.

Kristen opened the front door in the same jacket.

We stood there in the doorway like two polar bears. Her husband, Jeff, said, "Nobody move," and went for his phone. That picture is still on their refrigerator, under a magnet shaped like Missouri. I laughed along. On the drive home I took the sneakers off in the car.

How it happens

Here is what I have worked out since. Almost every piece of women's clothing has a date on it. You cannot see it on the hanger, but everybody can read it the minute you put it on.

The sensible things are dated to the year you stopped trying. The fleece, the pleated khaki, the shoes that fasten with Velcro. Nothing goes wrong in them, and nothing goes right.

The fashionable things are dated too, just to a year that is not yours. This season is cut for a twenty-six-year-old, and by next fall it will say "last year" instead.

So we swing between them. Too old, then too young, then back to too old, because at least too old does not end up on somebody's refrigerator. It is not that we have lost our taste. It is that we keep shopping from racks where everything has a date on it.

What my father knew

The answer turned up in a photo album.

Kristen wanted a picture of my mother for a frame, so I got the family albums down from the hall closet. I came back to the kitchen table with a different idea entirely, because my father is in nearly every one of those pictures wearing the same jacket.

It was a tobacco-brown suede sport coat with notched lapels and a chest pocket that always had a pencil in it. He wears it at my christening in 1962. He wears it at my wedding in 1983. He wears it at Kristen's high school graduation in 2003. Forty-one years in the same jacket, and he does not look dated in a single picture. He does not look like he is trying, either. He just looks like Dad.

That was what I had wrong. I thought I had to pick an age to dress. Men's country tailoring never had to. A brown sport coat with notched lapels and patch pockets was made for Sunday church and the feed store long before anybody thought of seasons, and it has never once chased a trend. Nothing about it was ever new, so nothing about it can get old.

His jacket is still in that garment bag, and it is far too big for me. But I could wear the idea.

I did not need my mother's closet or my daughter's. I needed my father's, cut for me.

Mine is the Cassandra

I went looking for Dad's jacket, cut for a woman. I found it at Wentworth & Rowe, a small family shop on King Street in Charleston, South Carolina, that has been there since 1998. This is the first fall they have sold online, which I will come back to.

Mine is the Cassandra. It is a warm tobacco-brown blazer with a soft, matte, brushed nap, the kind of surface you run your hand over without meaning to, and a rich, mottled depth of color, so it looks worn in on the day it arrives. Notched lapels. Two buttons. A chest pocket and two patch pockets at the hip. Every seam and every pocket edge is traced in tonal stitching, the way his was.

The difference is the cut. Dad's was built like a box, for a man who kept fence pliers in the pocket. This one is easy and a little longer, cut for a woman, so it skims instead of hugging. Over a white shirt and jeans it needs nothing else, and I have worn it over a navy dress to a wedding shower too. It was right both times.

Friday night, again

Three Fridays later we went back to Kristen's for dinner. White shirt, jeans, the Cassandra, and a pecan pie, because in the kitchen I am still my mother and always will be.

Kristen opened the door in the teddy jacket. She looked at me for a long second and said, "Okay. Where is that from?"

Jeff reached for his phone again. This time Kristen stopped him and took the picture herself, of me alone on her front step. Then she sent it to my brother Mitch in Kansas City without telling me.

Mitch called that night. Mitch is sixty-seven and does not call. He said, "Sue, you look like Dad." And before I could decide how I felt about that, he said, "In the good way."

That is when I knew I had it right. In the post office door I had looked like my mother. Now I looked like my father, and somehow that was the compliment. Not older, not younger. Just me, in something that never had a date on it.

Three things I have learned since

One. If it has a season, it has an age. Notched lapels, patch pockets, a brown that looks lived in. None of it was ever this year's, so none of it will ever be last year's.

Two. Let it look worn in. A jacket that looks brand new is announcing itself. A soft, brushed, mottled finish looks like it has been yours for years, which is exactly how you want it to look on the first day.

Three. Take his details, keep your cut. Men's details on a man's frame will swallow you. Cut easy and a little long for a woman's shape, it stops being your father's jacket and starts being yours.

One more thing, since the button on this page takes you to all of them: the Cassandra is one of ten blazers Wentworth & Rowe make. Mine is the second one you will see, right after an olive herringbone with velvet cuffs.

About the price

I will be plain about this, because it is the part I checked twice.

The Cassandra is $89.95. It was $299.95.

The teddy jacket and the platform sneakers cost me more than that together, and they have been to exactly one Friday night dinner.

The reason, as far as I can tell, is simple. For twenty-eight years Wentworth & Rowe was a shop you had to walk into on King Street. This is their first fall selling online, and they are opening that door with a sale. My father ran a feed store for thirty years and would have done exactly the same. I could not find a catch.

I read the small print before I ordered, as I expect you are doing now. Shipping is free in the US, and you have thirty days to send it back if it is not what you hoped. That was enough for me.

What I would tell you over coffee

If you were sitting at my kitchen table, this is what I would say.

The next time you pass a glass door, look. If you see your mother, or somebody wearing your daughter's clothes, you are not too old for style. You have just been shopping from racks with dates on them.

Then find a picture of your father, or your grandfather, or whichever man in your family always looked right. Look at what he had on. That is the rack with no dates.

Two practical things. The First Fall sale is on now, and the most popular sizes go first. And there are ten blazers to choose from, so if the Cassandra is not yours, one of the others will be.

Kristen has dropped two hints about Christmas. I am pretending not to understand them.

Susan