A letter from a reader

At 63, I had spent ten falls in navy and gray because everything with any color on it had a pumpkin on the front

The only thing I have written all month is the name of a goat on a pen card at the county show, in my best printing, and I still left the u out of Biscuit. 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 hoodie at the 4-H goat show out in Goldthwaite on Saturday, and I have explained it enough times now that it seemed easier to write it all down.

It starts with my closet in October. Every year, when the first cool morning finally comes, I open it up and every fall thing I own is navy, gray, or a beige that has seen better days. A navy cardigan. A gray sweatshirt. Another navy cardigan, slightly different.

It is not that I do not like color. I love fall color. I love the pecan trees going gold and the pumpkins on the church steps. The trouble is that every piece of fall clothing with any color in it seems to have a pumpkin printed on the front, or a word in glitter across the chest, or a turkey.

Festive, or forgettable. Every fall those were the only two choices in my closet.

And I picked forgettable, ten falls running, because I would rather nobody noticed me than have the whole room reading my sweatshirt.

I want to say plainly that I never decided to dress like a parking lot. Nobody does. It happens one fall at a time.

How it happens

You buy one novelty sweatshirt, because your granddaughter picks it out, or because it is the week before Thanksgiving and you want to feel part of things. You wear it once to the church supper and spend the evening feeling like a greeting card.

So it goes to the back of the drawer, and the next time you shop you play it safe. Navy goes with everything. Gray goes with everything. Nobody ever looked at a woman in a gray sweatshirt and thought she was trying too hard.

The trouble is that nobody looks at all. You end up the same color as the folding chairs, every October and November, while everything outside the window is putting on the best show of the year.

What I had wrong

Here is what I had wrong, and I suspect I am not the only one.

I thought a woman my age had to choose between color and dignity. I thought anything bright and seasonal was going to look like a costume on me, and anything grown-up was going to be navy.

My sister Sue showed me otherwise without saying a word about it. She came up from the coast for a long weekend at the start of October, and she walked into my kitchen in a big soft oversized hoodie made of patchwork panels in deep fall colors, plaid and stripes side by side. Not a pumpkin on it anywhere. It looked like one of our mother's old quilts, the ones that used to hang over the porch rail to air.

I asked her about it before she had put her bag down. She laughed and said she had bought it because she was tired of looking like the weather report in February.

The hoodie is called the Andrea

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. Sue's is one of the other designs in the same collection. The one I wanted was all rust and sage and tan and cream, the colors of a pecan grove in November, with plaid on the sleeves and a plaid hood, and that one is called the Andrea. I ordered it that same night after Sue went to bed.

It is an oversized pullover, made of vertical patchwork panels in rust, sage, tan and cream, with plaid on the sleeves and a plaid hood. The shoulders drop down low and easy, and the whole thing sits loose and long over a pair of jeans. The hood has a drawstring for when the wind gets up, and the rest of the time it just lies back behind your shoulders.

It is soft, the kind of soft you notice the minute you pull it over your head. It goes over a white tee and jeans, over leggings, even over a plain skirt, and it looks like you put it on for a reason.

What happened in Goldthwaite

Frank's niece has a girl named Kaylee who is twelve, and this fall she showed her very first goat at the county 4-H show in the show barn out in Goldthwaite. The goat is called Biscuit, and Kaylee has fed and walked and brushed that goat every single day since June. So the whole family drove out and stood at the rail for the morning. That barn has a roof and not much else, and a cold north wind comes straight across the pasture and through it.

I wore the Andrea with a white tee and jeans. By the second class I had the hood up, and I was warm the whole morning.

The first to ask was the woman beside me at the rail, whose grandson was showing two pens down. The second was the girl selling breakfast tacos at the concession stand, who said she wanted one for her mother. And then there was Dolores.

Dolores has kept the show records at that barn for twenty-six years. In all that time I have never once heard her say a word about anybody's clothes. She stopped me at the concession stand with her clipboard under her arm, looked me up and down, and said, Peggy, you are the only thing in this barn that looks like fall. From Dolores, that is as good as a purple ribbon.

Biscuit placed fourth in her class, by the way. I would like to say that is the part of the morning everybody asked me about. It was not.

Three things I have learned since

One. Color does not need a pumpkin on it. Rust and sage and cream say fall all by themselves. You do not need a word across your chest to tell people what season it is.

Two. Patchwork reads as grown-up. I was worried it would look busy. It does not. It looks like something your mother made, and nobody thinks a quilt is trying too hard.

Three. Festive and forgettable are not the only choices. I spent ten falls thinking I had to pick. I do not stand in front of the closet deciding anymore. I just reach for the Andrea.

About the price

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

The Andrea is $52.95. It was $106.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have seen plain gray sweatshirts in the department store for nearly that, with nothing on them at all.

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 one for my daughter. 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 Mullin had written, “I wore mine to the Thanksgiving parade and four people asked if I had made it myself. I let them think about it for a minute.”

My daughter’s arrived on Thursday.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If your closet is all navy and gray from October to March, or there is a pumpkin sweatshirt at the back of a drawer you only wear the week of Thanksgiving, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a hoodie will change anybody's life. It will not. But there is something in looking down at yourself on a cold fall morning and seeing the same colors as the trees, and still looking like yourself, that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on right now, and they have twenty designs in the collection, in every size from small to 5XL, so I would not wait for the first real norther to decide. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

The navy cardigans are still in the closet. They just do not get asked out much anymore.

Peggy