A letter from a reader

At 63, I had lost a scarf every winter for as long as I can remember, and one of them is still at the bottom of Aransas Bay

The only thing I have written this month is a list of the birds we saw off the back of a boat, in pencil in the margin of Frank's bird book, and I spelled half of them wrong. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about my top on the whooping crane boat out of Fulton on Saturday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to just write it all down.

My neck has always been the first part of me to get cold. Arms, I do not mind. Hands, I can wrap around a coffee cup. But the minute there is a breeze in October my neck feels it, and for most of my life the answer has been a scarf.

A cold neck, or a scarf I was fixing all day long. It always seemed I could have one, never both.

So I put up with the scarf. Tucked it in, pulled it out, wound it round twice, and lost one every single winter.

I could not tell you how many I have left behind. One in the seat pocket of a plane to Denver, one on a hook at the beauty shop, one at my daughter's in Belton that she says she never saw. And one, three falls ago, that the wind took clean off my shoulders on that same crane boat. Frank watched it go into the bay and said it was the first time he had ever seen me lose something that fast.

How it happens

When I was younger a scarf was something you wore because it looked nice. You put it on, it stayed where you put it, and you forgot about it.

What changed was not the scarves. It was me.

Somewhere past sixty I started feeling every draft, and a scarf went from something pretty to something I needed. And a scarf you need is a scarf you fuss with. It slips when you lean over to pick something up. It catches in the seatbelt. It goes in your lap at the restaurant and stays on the chair when you leave.

So you end up with a pile of scarves in the hall closet and a cold neck anyway, because the one you wanted is somewhere else.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I got most wrong, and I think a lot of us have.

I thought the answer was a better scarf. A longer one that would not slip, a heavier one, one of those little clips my mother used to wear. Every fall I bought another one, and every fall I was still fixing it by lunch.

It turns out that was never it.

It was not the scarf. It was that the scarf was a separate thing. What I needed was the warmth at my neck to be part of what I was already wearing, so there was nothing to slip, nothing to tuck and nothing to leave behind.

The top is called the Isoline

It is from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly looking after women our age for a few years now. My sister came over for supper in a green one, and when I said I liked the collar she undid the top button, let it fall open, then buttoned it right back up and said, that is the whole trick, Peg. I ordered mine that evening.

The top is called the Isoline. It is a soft rust corduroy with a fine ribbed texture, a tall collar that wraps across at the neck, and five cream buttons that run on a slant from the collar down to the hip instead of straight down the middle like an ordinary shirt. It is loose and relaxed, with roomy sleeves, and it is a little longer at the back than the front.

The first cool morning I put it on over my jeans and went out to the mailbox, and for once I did not go back in for a scarf. When the air turned chilly I left the collar wrapped up snug, and when it warmed up after lunch I undid the top button and let it fall open. The corduroy is soft against the skin and gives a little extra warmth on a cool morning, and the shape is easy and loose, so it never clings.

Nothing complicated about any of it. Just a collar that does what my scarves never would.

What happened on the bird boat

Frank has taken up birds since he retired, and every fall we drive down to the coast to ride the boat out of Fulton harbor to see the whooping cranes come in for the winter. You sit on a bench along the rail on the open back deck, and the wind comes straight across the bay at you the whole way out to the refuge.

The first woman asked me on the bench before we had even left the dock, while she was trying to get her own scarf to stay put. The second was a young woman pouring coffee at the little window into the cabin, who wanted to know if it came in other colors because her mother would love it. And then there was Ora Lee.

Ora Lee has taken the tickets on that boat for longer than most of those cranes have been alive, and in all those years I have never heard her say one word about anybody's clothes. She watched me stand at the rail in that wind with my hands free and my collar wrapped up, and when we came back in she looked me up and down and said, Peggy, that is the first year you have not spent the whole trip chasing a scarf. From Ora Lee, that is very nearly a standing ovation.

I told them all about it at the little table in the cabin on the way back, with the windows steamed up and Frank counting his cranes. Eleven, he says. I only saw nine, but I was talking.

Three things I have learned since

One. A collar beats a scarf. It cannot slip, it cannot blow away and I cannot leave it on a chair. Wrapped up when it is chilly, top button undone when it warms up.

Two. A little something goes a long way. I was worried a slanted row of buttons would be too much for me. It is not. It is a solid color, nothing loud, and it still looks like I made an effort.

Three. It goes with everything I already own. Over my jeans, with my black pants to church, and with a long skirt for Thanksgiving at my daughter's. I have not bought one new thing to go with it.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Isoline is $60.95. It was $122.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a scarf I lost in a month.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on right now.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it more. One woman from Austwell had written, “I bought it for the color and I wear it for the collar. I have not worn a scarf since the first cold front.”

Then I ordered a second one, in the burgundy, for Christmas.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on my back porch with a cup of coffee and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have a hall closet full of scarves and a neck that is cold anyway, not because you do not own the right one but because none of them will stay where you put them, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a top will change your life. It will not. But there is something about walking out the door in October and not having to think about your neck again until bedtime that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. They do it in rust, cream, black, burgundy, green and dusty rose, in every size from small to 2XL, and with Thanksgiving coming the cold mornings are already here. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

The scarves are still in the hall closet. I have not needed to open it since October.

Peggy