A letter from a reader

At 63, I needed four layers to leave the house, and my sister looked me up and down and said, Peggy, you look like an onion

Frank says I have started this letter four times and thrown three of them away, and he is right. I am not a writer, and in sixty-three years it has never once been my place to tell another woman what to put on.

But three different women asked me about a sweater at the auction preview on Thursday, and by the third one I decided it would be quicker to write it all down properly than to keep explaining it by the coffee urn.

It started with my sister Sue. We were going out for lunch, and she let herself in while I was getting ready in the hallway. An undershirt. A blouse over the undershirt. A cardigan over the blouse. And then the fleece, zipped up to the chin, because the car takes a while to warm up on a cold morning. Sue stood by the front door with her car keys in her hand, watched me put the whole lot on, and said it.

Peggy, you look like an onion.

I laughed, because it was funny. Then we got to the café, it was warm inside, and I spent the first twenty minutes peeling off layers and hanging them over the back of my chair while Sue sat there in one gray sweater looking completely comfortable. I felt like the coat rack.

I did not decide to dress like that. Nobody does. You feel the cold a bit more one winter, so you add a layer. Then another. And one morning after the first norther blows through, you look in the hall mirror and there is more cardigan than there is you.

How it happens

The trouble is the choice you are given. Go and look in any store at this time of year. There are thin little tops that would not keep a draft off a cracker, and there are great thick fleeces and hoodies that are warm but make you look like you are about to go and clean out the garage.

There is almost nothing in the middle. Nothing warm that also looks like you made a decision about it.

So we do the only sensible thing and pile the thin things on top of each other. It works, after a fashion. You are warm. You are also shapeless, and the minute you walk into a warm room you are either too hot or you are standing there taking things off in front of everybody.

Warm, or looking like yourself. For about ten years I thought you had to pick one.

What I had wrong

I thought the answer was a thicker sweater. I had a few, and every one of them was either too hot indoors or so heavy and bulky that I looked twice my size.

It turns out it was never about thickness. It was about being able to change your mind.

A layer that is warm without weighing a ton, that you can open a little when the room warms up and close again when you step outside, does the job of the whole pile. One piece. And if it has a bit of pattern and shape to it, it looks like something you chose, not something you put on to keep the weather out.

The sweater is called the Nina

It is from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now.

The sweater is called the Nina. It is a soft white sweater with a raised cable pattern running all the way through it, front, back and sleeves, so it has that pretty textured look of a cable knit without any of the weight. At the neck there is a short zip with a little silver ring to pull, and it finishes with neat ribbed cuffs and a ribbed band at the hem. Sue had the gray. I went for the white.

It has what I can only describe as a lightweight warmth. It is soft against your skin, it keeps you warm, and it does not feel like you are wearing a comforter. The fit is regular, so it sits nicely without clinging or swallowing you up.

And the zip is the whole trick. Zipped up to the top, it is snug at the neck on a cold morning. Pulled down a few inches, it opens into a neat little V and the whole thing looks a bit dressier, a bit more like you are going somewhere.

What happened at the auction preview

Frank has had his eye on a little oak bookcase, so on Thursday morning we drove out to the preview day at the auction house on the edge of town. If you have ever been to one you will know. It is freezing first thing, with the big loading doors open for the furniture, and by the afternoon it is packed and hot as a July parking lot.

I went in the Nina and my good coat, and nothing else. The coat came off at about half past ten. The zip came down a little after lunch. That was the sum total of my adjusting all day.

A lady looking at a set of china asked me where the sweater was from before we had even found the bookcase. A younger woman with a catalog asked the same by the paintings. And then Imogene, who has sat at the front desk of that auction house for longer than anyone can remember and has never said anything to me beyond good morning, looked up as we signed out and said I looked like I had come to buy, not just to look. From Imogene, that is practically a bid.

What I noticed more than any of that, though, was that I did not spend the day thinking about being cold or being hot. I spent it looking at furniture, which is what I had gone for.

The next morning I put it straight back on, zipped right up to the top, and walked my daughter's labrador around the block, since she had dropped him off with me for the day. Then I came home, pulled the zip down a little, and sat at the kitchen table with my coffee. Same sweater. Nothing to take off.

Three things I have learned since

One. One good layer beats four thin ones. I did not believe this until I tried it. I leave the house in the Nina and a coat now, and I am warmer than I ever was in the pile, and I do not arrive anywhere looking like I have been wrapped up for the mail.

Two. The zip earns its keep. Up for the cold, down a little for the warm. It sounds like nothing. It means you never have to stand in the middle of somebody's kitchen taking your clothes off.

Three. It layers well too. On a really cold day it goes over a blouse and the collar sits out neatly at the neck, and it goes under a coat without bunching. The sizing runs from a small to a 2XL and I took my usual size.

About the price

I will be honest, because this was the part that made me suspicious.

The Nina is $45.95. It was $92.00.

My first thought was that at that price the pattern would flatten after one wash, or it would be thin as a dish towel. You can pay more than that at the mall for a sweater that has lost its shape by Christmas.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they have a sale on while the first fall stock comes through.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and read the reviews first. 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 a little more. One woman from Palacios had written, ‘I bought the white thinking it would be too good to wear, and I have not had it off since.’ That was very nearly me.

Then I ordered the blue one as well. It is a real deep blue, not the washed-out kind, and Frank says it is the first thing he has seen me in for years that he actually noticed.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting at my kitchen table, and you had just hung three cardigans over the back of my chair to get comfortable, this is what I would say.

Count the layers you put on to go out tomorrow. If it is more than two, and you still do not feel quite right in any of them, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this one.

Not because a sweater will change your life. It will not. But walking into a warm room and not having to do anything about it, and looking like yourself while you do it, is a small daily pleasure I had quietly given up on.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone, usually before the first real norther has even blown through.

I leave the house in one layer now, and I still get there warm.

Peggy