A letter from a reader

I took one cardigan away for four days and never once needed the other one

I am 66 and I pack badly. Not too much, exactly. Wrongly. I take a jumper for the evenings and a cardigan for the days and then wear neither of them properly, because the jumper is too warm indoors and the cardigan looks like I have given up the moment I go out in it.

Four days in Whitstable in August and I took one thing. That has never happened before and I have been slightly smug about it ever since.

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

The trick is that it buttons all the way up. Done up it reads as a jumper, with a neat round neck and nothing hanging open. Left undone it is a cardigan, and because there is a narrow orange trim running down both front edges, the open version does not look like an afterthought the way a plain cardigan does.

Buttoned it is one thing and open it is another, and I have stopped packing both.

The stripes are knitted into the yarn rather than printed on top, which I only know because I looked closely, and it is the difference between colour that stays and colour that goes chalky after a few washes. The buttons are a smoky tortoiseshell and there is a proper rib at the cuffs and hem that has not gone wavy.

It is cut with a dropped shoulder and a bit of room, so it goes over a shirt without pulling across the back, and it stops at the hip rather than halfway down, which I have decided matters more than I used to think.

It was £39.95, down from £125, because they are clearing the run. There are five colourways and each one is built around a single accent: mine is the pale blue with orange. There is also a white with orange, a beige with orange, a burgundy with white and a brown with pale blue.

One thing I should say plainly. The sizes run from a UK 8/10 to a UK 14/16 and no further. If you are above that this is not the one, and I would rather tell you here than have you find out at the checkout.

Emma has written her own piece about how they had it made, including why the stripes are knitted rather than printed. It is here if you like knowing that sort of thing.

If you have been taking two things away and wearing neither, this is the one I would look at before the run goes.