A letter from a reader

I own a winter coat and six cardigans and absolutely nothing for the eight weeks in between

I am 66 and I have a dog, which means I am outside twice a day whether the weather has made its mind up or not. From about the middle of September to the middle of November it has not. It is nine degrees at half past seven and seventeen by eleven, and I have spent years going out in the wrong thing twice a day.

The coat is too much. I get to the end of the road and I am carrying it. A cardigan is not enough, and the moment there is any wind in it I may as well have brought nothing.

What I wanted, and what I could not find anywhere, was the thing in between. Something with a bit of body to it that stops at the hip and does not need to be zipped to the chin to do its job.

This is it. It is from The Winslow Sisters, the small shop in Richmond that Emma and Alison have had for eleven years, and it is called the Bettany.

It is a proper jacket rather than a heavy one. Hip length, a soft floral print, a narrow ruffle running down the front edge, and buttons if you want them. I almost never do them up. On a cold morning I do the middle two and that is plenty.

It is the layer I had been missing for about fifteen years without ever quite naming it.

I will be honest about the ruffle, because it is the reason I nearly did not order it. I am 66 and my instinct with anything frilled is that it is meant for somebody thirty years younger and I will look like I am trying.

It is not that sort of ruffle. It is narrow, it runs down the two front edges rather than gathering round the neck, and what it actually does is give the opening a line so the jacket looks like a decision when it is hanging loose. That is the whole of it. Nothing gathers, nothing stands up.

The fabric is light and it moves. It is not a stiff jacket and it is not lined, so it packs down into a bag on the days it turns warm, which around here is most of them. It went in a rucksack to Winchester and came out without a crease worth mentioning.

Monty and I have had it out in fine drizzle more than once. It is not a raincoat and I would not pretend otherwise. For actual rain the coat still comes out. For everything on either side of actual rain, this is what goes on.

It was £44.95, down from £140, because they are clearing the run. There is one colourway, the pink floral, so the only thing you have to decide is the size.

On which: it goes from a UK 8/10 all the way up to a UK 28/30, which is a wider range than most things I have bought in the last ten years and the reason I have sent this to two friends already.

Emma has written her own piece about how they had it made and what she would not let them change. It is here if you like knowing that sort of thing.

If your autumn is also a coat you are carrying and a cardigan that is not doing anything, this is the gap it fills.