A letter from a reader

The two coats 3 women asked me about in a rainy grocery store parking lot

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But on Saturday my daughter and I made the big grocery run, and the sky, which had promised us a dry morning, changed its mind halfway across the parking lot. A proper gray cold-front rain, out of nowhere. While a whole row of us stood under our liftgates waiting for it to pass, three different women asked me about my coats. Both of them, because my daughter had borrowed one. I have now explained the pair of them enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

The woman loading groceries next to us summed it up while the rain hammered on the liftgate. She looked from my daughter to me and said it.

One for the calendar and one for the forecast. How organized.

She meant it as a joke, I think. But that is exactly what they are, and it took me most of my adult life to get here, so I am going to write it down for anyone still standing in a wet parking lot in the wrong coat.

How it happens

For years I owned one good coat at a time and asked it to do everything. The school pickups, the funerals, the dog park, the lunches, the cold-front downpours.

And a coat asked to do everything does all of it badly. The smart one pills and goes sorry for itself because it has been dragged through weather it was never meant for. Or you buy the sensible one, and then you arrive at a nice lunch dressed for a flood warning and spend the first hour apologizing for yourself.

Nobody decides to live like that. It happens quietly, one compromise at a time, until a stranger in a parking lot points out that you have finally, accidentally, solved it.

Because this fall, without quite planning to, I ended up with exactly two. The smart one and the weather one. Both from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Between them they have the whole season covered, and neither cost what you would think.

The green one is the Ashbury

The Ashbury is the smart one. A proper longline trench, double breasted, in a muted sage green that reads as a real color without shouting about it. Big collar you can turn up when the wind gets personal, a tie belt with a buckle that gives you a waist without an argument, buckled straps at the cuffs, and deep slanted pockets that actually hold things.

The outer is smooth and it shrugs off wind and light rain, so a damp forecast does not disqualify it. But its real job is different. It is the one I put on when I want to look like myself on purpose. Belted over jeans, it turns a run to the pharmacy into an outing. My daughter borrowed it for brunch on Saturday and I have not fully forgiven her for how well it suited her.

The Ashbury is $47.95 at the moment. It was $94.00. It comes in sizes M to 2XL.

The beige one is the Merrivale

The Merrivale is the weather one, and I want to be fair to it, because the weather one is usually the coat nobody writes love letters to.

It is a softly shaped everyday rain coat in a pale beige, with a smooth outer that sees off a light shower, three buttons, a soft lining that is kind against your neck, flap pockets at the hips for the phone and the keys and the folded leash, and a gently shaped cut that follows you rather than hanging off you like a tent. It lives on the hook by the door and it goes over everything I own without a struggle.

On Saturday it earned its keep. The sky did its worst, my daughter’s labrador supervised from the cargo area, and I came home dry and completely unbothered, which I understand is what the well organized feel like all the time.

The Merrivale is $47.95 at the moment. It was $94.00. It comes in sizes M to 4XL.

What happened in the parking lot

So there we were, one of us in each. My daughter in the green, me in the beige, the labrador in disgrace for shaking rainwater over the groceries. Three women asked about the coats before the rain let up. One of them asked my daughter where the trench was from while pretending to rearrange her own trunk, which where I come from is practically an interview.

The woman next to us asked which one of us she was supposed to be complimenting. I said both, obviously, and then I stood in the rain and explained the whole arrangement, which is how I know it was time to write it down.

Three things I have learned since

One. Name the job and the coat gets simpler. The Ashbury is for looking like myself. The Merrivale is for the sky having other plans. Neither has to pretend to be the other, which is why both do their job properly.

Two. The weather one does not have to look like defeat. That was my mistake for years. A rain coat that is actually shaped like a woman, in a proper soft beige, means the wet days stop being the days you hope not to see anyone.

Three. The smart one gets worn more, not less. Once the downpours belong to the Merrivale, the Ashbury stays looking like the day it arrived, so I stopped saving it. It has done a birthday lunch, the pharmacy, and a school pickup, and felt right at every single one.

About the price

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

Both coats are $47.95 at the moment, each down from $94.00. The pair together cost less than one department store coat that would have been asked to do everything and managed none of it.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they run a sale to move the season through.

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 rather more. One woman had written, “Bought the trench for a wedding and wore it to walk the dog the next morning. It has not been off its hook since it dried.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat on the porch with coffee and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Stop asking one coat to do everything. Get one that makes you feel like yourself, and one that lets the sky do whatever it likes, and the whole season gets easier. It is not extravagance. It is the end of the wrong coat.

Two practical things. Shipping is free, and the boutique told me plainly that once this stock is gone, it is gone, so the popular sizes disappear first. The Ashbury runs M to 2XL and the Merrivale runs M to 4XL, so check your own before the middle ones go.

One for the calendar, one for the forecast. The stranger in the parking lot was right.

Peggy