A lifetime of fall jackets and I never wrote a word about one. This is the exception
A lifetime of fall jackets and I never wrote a word about one. This is the exception
Six things the Amaya gets right that fall jackets get wrong, from a woman who does not review clothes.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Peggy, I am 63, I live in Austin, and I have never in my life sat down to write about a jacket. What I have done is buy them, a lifetime of them, and watch most turn me into a mattress or quit on me at sundown. So this is not a review. It is a woman who was wrong about a jacket, saying so.
The one I am writing about is called the Amaya, from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I first saw it on another grandmother at the pumpkin patch out past Dripping Springs, and when the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
A quilted jacket printed like an oil painting, in a hayfield. I assumed hand-made and three figures. I was wrong on both counts. Read on.
Here is what a lifetime of fall jackets taught me. They come in two piles. The puffy pile, which is warm and turns a woman into wrapped furniture. And the pretty pile, thin little florals that photograph nicely at noon and abandon you the minute the sun drops behind the live oaks.
Warm and shapeless, or pretty and useless after sundown. Those were the fall options, and I had done my years in both.
The Amaya is the first fall jacket I have owned that is neither, and having worn it most days for two weeks, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The morning it arrived. I ordered it expecting to send it back. It has not left the hook by the door since.
The print is placed, like a painting
The roses are not repeated by the mile. They gather along the hem and climb up one side, crimson and coral and pink over that deep teal, and the other shoulder stays quiet. It reads like something one-of-a-kind, which is exactly why I assumed it cost a fortune in a hayfield. No one else at the pumpkin patch was wearing my jacket, and no one at church has been either.
The roses over the wave quilting, up close. Dense at the hem, quiet at the shoulder.
Three people asked me about it at the farmers market. It looks custom-made and it absolutely was not priced like it.
Linda H., GeorgetownIt is warm without the puff
The padding is light and quilted flat in that pretty old wave stitch, so it holds real warmth without adding an inch anywhere. I have worn it on cold morning walks and inside the grocery store without cooking, and not once have I looked like the comforter got up and left the house.
Finally warm without looking inflated. I wore it to my grandson’s game in the wind and forgot about the weather.
Carol M., Round RockSnaps, so it is on and off in a second
Little brass snaps down the front, hidden behind the neat charcoal edging. No zipper to catch, no buttons to work with cold fingers or a grandchild on one hip. Snapped shut it looks clean and finished. Open, the brass catches the light. Either way it takes one second, which is exactly the amount of patience I bring to outerwear.
The brass snaps and the charcoal edging. One second, on or off.
The snaps are my favorite part. Arthritis and zippers do not get along, and this asks nothing of my hands.
Dorothy K., KerrvilleThe inside is as pretty as the outside
Open it up and the whole lining is quilted cream, clean and finished, no seams and stuffing on show. It means the jacket looks intentional worn open over a tee, which is how it spends half its life, and it feels like a made thing rather than an assembled one.
I wear it open most days just to show the cream inside. It is finished everywhere you look.
Susan T., FredericksburgIt goes over everything I own
Jeans and a tee, obviously. But it also sits beautifully over a dress for church and over leggings for the early walk, because the cut is relaxed and the length covers what a woman wants covered. One jacket, the whole fall calendar.
Dress on Sunday, jeans on Monday, leggings on the trail Tuesday. Same jacket all three days and right every time.
Barbara W., San MarcosThe cut is easy and the sizing is honest
Relaxed through the body with room for a sweater underneath when it turns properly cold, and the sizes run S to 3XL and mean what they say. I ordered my usual and it fit my usual, which after a lifetime of sizing roulette still feels like a small miracle.
On the closet door, ready for the morning. It rarely makes it back inside the closet.
True to size with room to layer. Roomy without being sloppy, which is the hardest thing to find.
Nancy P., WacoThe Amaya, against the fall jackets you have been buying
You can find a quilted jacket for seventy-odd dollars in any big store. I know, because I own the evidence. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Puffy and shapeless, or pretty and thin
Repeat print off a mile-long roll
Zippers that catch and buttons that fight
Raw seams and stuffing on the inside
Sizes that quit before many of us start
Light quilted warmth with a real shape
A placed painting of roses, one of a kind
Brass snaps, on and off in a second
Quilted cream lining, finished everywhere
Honest sizing, S to 3XL
About the price
The Amaya is $69.95 at the moment. It was $140.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that the fall run is made in one batch and it is already going, so once this stock is gone, it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and two weeks of daily wear has not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
Folded on the entry table, tag still on, for about an hour. Then it went back on.
If you have a pumpkin patch, a sideline, a porch or a church parking lot in your October, and you have done your years in the two piles, this is the jacket I would put in your hands myself, while your size is still there. Stop dithering and go look.
Peggy
AMAYA | Vintage Floral Print Quilted Jacket
- Placed painterly rose print, reads one of a kind
- Light quilted warmth in a wave stitch, zero puff
- Brass snaps, on and off in a second
- Quilted cream lining, finished inside and out
- Layers over dresses, jeans and leggings
- Honest sizing, S to 3XL
- FREE shipping & 100% happiness guarantee
Fall run going now. The middle sizes go first.