A letter from a reader

September is the month I have nothing to put on, and I think I have finally fixed it

I am 66 and every year there are about six weeks where I stand in the hall and cannot solve it. A cardigan is not enough by half past four. A proper winter coat is ridiculous at eleven in the morning. So I take the coat, get too warm, and carry it about.

That gap is where most of my clothes budget has gone over the years, on things that turned out to be one or the other after all.

This one is from The Winslow Sisters, the small shop in Richmond that Emma and Alison have run for eleven years. It is called the Ceres, and it is the first thing I have found that actually sits in the middle.

It is a soft plush rather than a wool, with a raised texture running down it in narrow lines, so it has some depth to it instead of looking like a fleece. It is double breasted, which means it closes properly across the front without a belt to fiddle with, and it comes to mid thigh so you are covered where it counts.

Warm at eight in the morning and still right at four, which is the whole trick and almost nothing manages it.

It is light for how warm it is, which I did not expect. I have had it over a roll-neck and over nothing but a shirt and it has been right both times, and I can drive in it, which rules out about half of what I own.

It was £49.95, down from £155. It comes in the one colour, a soft greige that goes with everything, and I should say plainly that the sizes only run from a UK 6/8 to a UK 12/14. If you are above that this is not the one, and I would rather tell you now than have you find out at the door.

Emma has written her own piece about the six things she held out for, including why it is not a flat fleece. It is here.

If you lose September every year the way I do, this is the one I would look at.