A letter from a reader

There are two wrong ways to get dressed at 64. I hung both of them on my shower rod. The right way was in the paddock at Keeneland.

I have never written anything like this before, but my son told me I look like I own a racehorse, and I have decided it is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all year.

That needs some explaining, so let me start with the bathroom.

Once you are past sixty, there are two wrong ways to get dressed. You can look like your mother, or you can look like you are trying to be somebody's daughter. Most of us could pick either one out of a crowd. This fall I managed to own both at the same time.

In October our son Daniel's fiancée, Claire, invited my husband Glenn and me to dinner to meet her parents, who were flying down from Connecticut. I had met her mother, Patrice, once, on a video call, and even on a laptop screen she looked like a woman who has never worn the wrong thing in her life.

It was the first time our two families would sit at one table. I wanted to look like myself on a good day, and I honestly could not remember what that looked like anymore.

Two weeks before the dinner I carried my two possible outfits into the guest bathroom, where the light is honest, hung them on the shower rod, and texted my sister Lynn a photo of each.

The first was a dusty-rose knit pantsuit with a long matching cardigan, the one I had bought for "occasions."

Lynn texted back two words: "Hi, Mama."

She was right. It was our mother's Easter outfit, give or take a brooch.

The second was a leopard-print blouse with big balloon sleeves and a pair of cropped faux-leather pants. My hairdresser, Kimmie, who is thirty-one, had shown me pictures on her phone and promised me everyone was wearing them. Everyone was, on her phone.

Lynn texted back, "Oh, honey. No." A minute later she added, "Do you still have the receipt?"

How it happens

I have thought about this a good deal since, and here is what I believe happens.

Almost everything sold to women our age has a year sewn into it. The "occasion" pantsuit was designed for a grandmother in about 1994, and nobody has touched the pattern since. The leopard blouse was designed this spring for a twenty-six-year-old, and it will look dated before next spring does.

So whichever one you put on, your clothes announce a year. One says "old." The other says "trying." And everyone at the table quietly does the arithmetic.

It is not that we lost our taste somewhere around sixty. It is that we keep being sold clothes with a date on them.

What the horsemen know

The answer was somewhere I have looked every October of my life.

I grew up in Lexington, and in our family October means the fall meet at Keeneland. Since I was a girl I have stood at the paddock rail and watched the horsemen walk in before each race: the trainers, the owners, the old bloodstock men who have been buying and selling yearlings since before I was born.

They wear tweed. Herringbone, mostly, in browns and greens, with a pocket square in some loud paisley that their wives gave up arguing about years ago. There is one old trainer, well into his eighties, whose brown herringbone I have seen at that rail for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what year he bought it. Neither does anybody else, and that is the whole point.

In all those Octobers I have never once heard anyone say one of those men looked old. I have never heard anyone say one of them was trying too hard. Nobody at that rail asks how old anybody is. They are simply the best-dressed people at the track, year after year.

That was what I had missed. A country tweed was cut to outlast the man who bought it, so it never belongs to any one year. That old trainer's jacket was not young in 1975 and it is not old now. And clothes that never belonged to a year cannot give away yours.

I did not need to look younger. I needed to look like I had never once worried about it.

Mine is the Georgette

So I went looking for a horseman'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 Georgette. It is a warm brown herringbone blazer with peaked lapels, a welt pocket at the breast, two engraved metal buttons down the front, and every edge bound in chestnut trim. The cuffs are striped, with three small buttons on each.

Then there is the part that made me laugh out loud, alone in my own bedroom. The peaked lapels and the pocket flaps are a dark paisley. The horsemen keep their paisley to a pocket square. The Georgette wears it right on the lapels, where everybody can see it.

The other difference is the cut. The jackets at the rail are built square, for men who spend their mornings on horseback. This one is fitted and shaped at the waist, with a clean shoulder and a single vent at the back, so there is no mistaking whose it is. The herringbone is firm and textured, and it holds its line all evening instead of slumping by dessert.

Underneath it I wear a white shirt and my dark jeans, and I do not have to think about anything else.

What happened at dinner

Claire booked a table at an old inn outside town, the kind of dining room with dark wood paneling and candles that have been lit every night since before any of us were born.

Glenn watched me come down the stairs and said, "Well, look at you," which from Glenn is a speech.

Patrice was already at the table, in navy, exactly as polished as I had feared. Halfway through the soup she reached across, touched my lapel, and asked if it was vintage.

I told her no, it was brand new. It had just never been young.

She laughed, and from there the evening was easy. Two mothers at one table, talking about our children as if we had known each other for years.

The next afternoon we took Claire's parents to the races at Keeneland, because in our family that is what you do with company in October. Daniel stood back from the paddock rail for a minute, watching the owners walk in with their trainers. Then he looked me up and down and said, "Mom. You look like you own one of these horses."

I have stood at that rail since I was a girl, admiring how those people dress. It is the nicest thing anybody has said about my clothes in a very long time.

Three things I have learned since

One. Ask what year it comes from. Before you buy anything, ask yourself whether it could have been worn at that paddock rail in 1975 and still be worn there in 2045. If it could, it will not give away your age, because it never had one of its own.

Two. Let one thing have a sense of humor. A proper tailored blazer can look stiff all by itself. A little paisley where nobody expects it is what makes it look like a choice and not a uniform.

Three. Buy the thing you will still wear at eighty. The old horsemen do, and not one of them has ever stood in front of a shower rod wondering who he was supposed to be.

One more thing, since the button on this page takes you to all of them: the Georgette is one of ten jackets Wentworth & Rowe make. Mine is the third one you will see, so keep going past the first two if it is the paisley you are after.

About the price

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

The Georgette is $89.95. It was $299.95.

I had spent more than that on the pantsuit and the leopard blouse together, and neither one ever made it out of the house.

Here is the reason for the price, as best I understand it. For twenty-eight years the only way to buy from Wentworth & Rowe was to walk through their door on King Street. This fall, for the first time, they are selling online, and they are celebrating with a sale. I looked for a catch and did not find one.

Shipping is free anywhere in the US, and if it is not right you have thirty days to send it back. I am a woman who keeps her receipts, and that was enough for me.

If you have something coming up

Maybe it is a wedding, or a christening, or a first dinner with the other family. If you have been standing in front of your closet and seeing only your mother's clothes and a few things meant for someone half your age, I know that feeling exactly.

You have not lost your taste. You have just been shopping for clothes with a date on them.

Find the thing the best-dressed old man you know has worn for fifty years. Then find it cut for you.

Two practical things before I go. The First Fall sale is on now, and the most popular sizes go first. And the Georgette is one of ten, so if paisley is not you, one of the others will be.

Glenn says I have a racing jacket now. It hangs by the front door, where I can reach it.

Susan