A letter from a reader

At 63, I owned one pretty coat, and in twenty-two years I had worn it exactly three times

The last thing I wrote that anybody else read was the recipe card for my sweet potato pie, and my sister-in-law Darlene still calls to ask what I meant by a good handful. 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 jacket at the Yamboree up in Gilmer last Saturday, and I have explained it enough times now that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started in September, when my sister Sue came to stay for the weekend. She went to hang her things in the hall closet and found my good coat in there, still in its plastic garment bag. The camel one with the big collar, that I bought for our nephew's wedding twenty-two years ago. She asked me how many times I had worn it, and I had to stop and count. The wedding, a funeral, and one Christmas Eve service. Three. Then she looked at the navy quilted vest on the hook beside it, the one I wear to everything from October to March, and she said it.

Peggy, you are saving it for a day that is not coming.

I laughed, and then that night I lay awake doing the arithmetic, and she was right. The vest at the grocery store. The vest at the grandkids' ball games. The vest at our anniversary supper, with my good earrings on and the vest zipped up over the top. And the pretty coat in a bag in the dark, waiting on an occasion good enough for it.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to keep her nicest things for a life she has stopped going out to. It happens one sensible fall at a time, until your sister opens a closet door and there it is.

How it happens

When Frank and I were first married, I wore my nicest blouse to the grocery store and never thought twice about it. Pretty was just what you put on in the morning.

What changed was not me. It was the idea, picked up somewhere along the way, that pretty things are for occasions, and that a woman my age does not have many of those left.

The stores go right along with it. A good coat is long and heavy and costs the earth, and it needs a wedding to justify it. Everything else they sell for fall is a vest, a fleece or something puffy in navy or gray.

So the good coat goes in a bag, and the vest goes on the hook by the door. You wear it everywhere. Nobody says anything. That is the trouble.

What I had wrong

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

I thought pretty and everyday lived in two different closets. One for the handful of days that count, and one for all the rest, and somewhere around sixty I had moved into the second one for good.

It turns out the pretty part was never the problem.

It was the length, and the weight, and the fuss. A long heavy dress coat needs an occasion. A short soft jacket that zips, that you can throw on over a pair of jeans, only needs a Saturday. It took me until 63 to see that the pretty thing and the everyday thing could be one and the same.

The jacket is called the Violetta

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 jacket is called the Violetta. Short and soft and plush, in a deep chocolate brown, the color of a good pecan pie, with a little stand-up collar that sits close around your neck and a zip down the front. It comes in black, green, red, blue and purple as well, which I will come back to.

It is warm, properly warm on a cold morning, but it is not bulky, so you do not feel like you are walking around in a sleeping bag. It is cut neat and close and still moves with you, which I appreciated climbing up onto a hay bale with a plate of pie in each hand. And because it is short, it sits right over jeans, and just as nicely over a skirt for supper afterward.

Nothing complicated about any of it. Just a pretty jacket somebody made for an ordinary Saturday.

What happened at the Yamboree

Every October Frank and I drive up to Gilmer to stay with his sister Darlene for the Yamboree, the big sweet potato festival they have up there in the piney woods. There is a parade and a carnival and the old fiddlers on the courthouse square, and more sweet potato pie than any one town has a right to. This year a cold front came through on Friday night, and on Saturday morning the pines were sighing and you could see your breath in the line for coffee.

I wore the Violetta for the first time. A woman in the line for pie asked me about it before I had even paid. A young mother pushing a stroller asked me the second time, over by the hay bales. And then there was Inez, who has run the church pie table on that square every October since before Darlene moved to town, and who has never once said a word about anything I had on.

She handed me my slice, looked me up and down, and said, Well, Peggy, you came dressed for the coronation. From Inez, that is a blue ribbon.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I forgot all about it. It was cold enough at noon to pull my hands up into my sleeves, and warm enough by three that the men in their hunting coats were carrying them, and I just unzipped it and stayed for the fiddlers.

The next morning I put it straight back on for church with Darlene, and felt completely myself in it. That is the rarest sort of jacket. The one that sits on a hay bale with a plate of pie on Saturday and in a church pew on Sunday, and looks right in both.

Three things I have learned since

One. Warm does not have to mean bulky. It keeps the chill off on a gray morning without weighing you down, and by the afternoon you can unzip it and carry on. For our in-between Texas weather, that is the whole point.

Two. Pretty is allowed on a Tuesday. I have worn it to the post office, to the pharmacy and to sit with the grandkids at the ball field. It zips on over whatever I have on, and I have stopped asking whether the day is good enough for it.

Three. Order your usual size. It comes from a small up to a 3XL in a neat, tailored cut. I wear a medium in nearly everything, and the medium went on over a sweater with room to move my arms.

About the price

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

The Violetta is $44.95. It was $90.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that just to have the good coat cleaned.

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 while the first of the fall stock comes in.

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 Kilgore had written, “I bought the brown thinking it would be for Christmas parties. I have worn it to the feed store, the bank and my grandson’s band concert, and somebody has asked me about it every time.”

Then I ordered the black one as well, for Christmas Eve.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were out on Darlene's back porch with two cups of coffee and the pine needles coming down on the roof, this is what I would say.

If you have something pretty hanging in a bag at the back of the closet, and you have quietly decided that pretty things are for occasions you do not get invited to anymore, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

A jacket is not going to change your life, and I would never tell you it would. But there is something about catching yourself in the truck window on a gray morning and liking the woman looking back that I had zipped away in a garment bag along with that coat, and I would rather you did not zip yours away too.

Two practical things. The sale is on right now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the medium in black was gone by the time I went back and I had to wait for it. And the first of the fall stock is already going, and once this stock is gone, it is gone.

I do not save things for best anymore. Saturday is best.

Peggy