A letter from a reader

Warm jackets are ugly. Pretty ones are useless by Thanksgiving. At 64, I finally found one that's both

Warm jackets are ugly. Pretty jackets are useless by Thanksgiving. I believed both of those things for most of my life, and this fall I found out I was only half right.

I am 64, I live in Connecticut with my Labrador, and from the middle of October to the end of April I have spent every Sunday morning at church dressed like a trash bag.

I say that with love, because I was not alone. Every woman at coffee hour wears the same black puffer. Mine included. We hang them on the same row of hooks by the hall door, and after the service we stand there for a minute working out which one is ours.

Two women at coffee hour put their hands inside my jacket last Sunday, and both of them made exactly the same noise.

I will come to the noise. First, the hooks.

Nobody sets out to look like that. You buy the black puffer because it is warm and it goes with everything, and the woman in the store promises it will last ten years. It does. That is the trouble.

How it happens

Every fall the same choice comes round. There is the warm jacket, black or navy or a gray that is trying not to be noticed, puffed up like a sleeping bag. And there is the pretty jacket, thin cotton with a nice print, which is perfect for about three weeks in October.

By Thanksgiving the pretty one goes back in the closet and the black one comes out, and it stays out until the daffodils.

So for half of every year, the first thing anyone saw of me was a coat I did not like. I had stopped seeing it myself. I only noticed when I caught my reflection in the window of the bank and thought, there goes somebody's aunt waiting for a bus.

What I had wrong

Here is what I had wrong. I thought the warmth had to show. A warm coat had to be thick and dark and shapeless, and anything with a bit of color and shape to it would let the wind straight through.

It turns out the warmth can simply live on the inside. A soft fleece lining does the work the bulk was doing, and a lining is something nobody sees until you open the front.

I had spent thirty winters choosing between two jackets, when what I actually wanted was one.

Mine is the Nell

I found it through my sister. Years ago the two of us spent a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, and the shop she still talks about is a little family place on King Street called Wentworth & Rowe. Margaret Rowe has run it since 1998. This is the first fall they have sold online, and my sister sent me the link before I had finished my coffee.

Mine is the Nell. The body is a deep navy, quilted in soft wavy rows, and painted roses in coral and peach climb up from the hem as if someone started at the bottom with a brush and could not stop. They carry on round the back. Then you open the front, and the whole inside is cream fleece.

It has a stand collar that sits close to the neck, so there is no gap for the wind to find and no scarf stuffed down the front. It closes with snaps, which my fingers are grateful for on a cold morning. It comes to the hip, it is easy through the shoulders, and there are two front pockets with piping round the edges, the kind of detail you only notice up close and then keep noticing.

It is warm enough for the dog walk and light enough that I do not have to take it off to drive.

What happened at coffee hour

The first Sunday I wore it, I hung it on the hooks with all the black ones, and I could see it from across the hall. One navy jacket with roses on it, in a row of trash bags.

Two women came over before my coffee was even poured. Ruth, who has sat two pews behind me for eleven years and never said much more than good morning, asked where it was from. Then she did what I would have done. She opened the front and put her hand flat on the lining.

"Ooh," she said.

Her friend did exactly the same thing a minute later and made exactly the same noise. Nobody has ever put a hand inside my black puffer, and I would not have wanted them to.

The Nell is only the one I happened to pick. They make sixteen of these, each with a different painting on the outside, and the button below shows you all of them. Ruth has ordered a gray one. I am trying very hard not to order a second.

Three things I have learned since

One. The warmth is in the lining, not the bulk. It sits flat instead of puffing up, so it fits under a seatbelt, it fits in a pew, and I do not look twice my size in photographs.

Two. Snaps beat zippers. No fiddling to start a zipper with cold fingers at the bottom of the driveway. Press, press, press, and I am out the door with the dog.

Three. Color in November does something to you. On a gray Tuesday, when the leaves are down and the sky is the color of a sidewalk, I look down and there are coral roses. It is a small thing. It is not nothing.

About the price

I will be plain about this, because it is the part that made me look twice.

The Nell is $84.95. It was $283.95.

I hesitated, and then I did the sum properly. It does the job of two jackets: the warm one I did not like and the pretty one that was no use after Thanksgiving. Paying once for a jacket I love, instead of twice for two I put up with, is not a hard sum.

As for why it is marked down, there is nothing mysterious about it. Margaret Rowe has run the shop on King Street for twenty-eight years, this is their first fall selling online, and they are marking the season with a sale.

Shipping in the US is free, and there are thirty days to send it back if it is not right. I read that part twice before I ordered. That was enough for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If we were standing at the coat hooks after church and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and look at the jacket you will be living in from now until April. If it is black and puffed and you stopped seeing it years ago, you have simply never been shown the one that is warm on the inside and lovely on the outside. Now you have.

It is a small thing. But it is half the year, and it is the first thing anyone sees of you from October on.

Two practical things. The First Fall sale is on now, and the most popular sizes go first. And there are sixteen designs, so take a minute and find the one that is properly you.

The black puffer is at the back of the hall closet now, keeping the vacuum cleaner warm.

Susan