A letter from a reader

At 63, I realized nothing I owned had ever made anybody smile

I want to be honest with you before we go any further. I have never written anything like this in my life, I am certainly no writer, and telling other women what they ought to wear is not a habit I ever intended to pick up.

But three different women asked me about a sweater in the bakery line on Saturday morning, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with my sister Sue, at the little breakfast place we go to, last month. She arrived in a sweater with a little cardinal on the front, and my very first thought, and I am not proud of it, was that she could not possibly wear that at her age. Then I watched. The waitress smiled at it. The woman at the next table said her granddaughter would love it. Sue sat there having a wonderful time, and I sat across from her in navy, as usual, being no trouble to look at whatsoever.

I must have said some of that out loud, because Sue put her cup down and looked at me.

At our age, Peggy, you have earned the right to wear what makes you smile.

I thought about that the whole drive home. I went through the closet that evening, and there was not one single thing in it that anybody had ever smiled at. Navy, gray, brown, black. Forty odd hangers of clothes chosen, every one of them, to go unnoticed. And the worst part is that it had worked.

How it happens

Nobody decides to dress like that. It happens quietly.

You buy sensible things because sensible things are what the stores put in front of women our age. Rack after rack of the same safe shades, cut not to draw attention, described as classic or versatile, which we all know by now is a polite way of saying forgettable. Anything with a bit of wit in it is three aisles away, cut for a teenager, in a fabric you can see through.

So the choice seems settled before you get to the register. You can dress properly for your age, or you can wear something with a little joy in it. It always seemed I could have one, never both. And once you believe that, the joy leaves the closet one sensible purchase at a time, and nobody smiles at anything you wear for twenty years, and you tell yourself that was never the point of clothes anyway.

What I had wrong

I assumed playful meant childish. That was my whole objection to Sue’s cardinal, and it fell apart the moment I looked at it properly.

What makes a thing look childish is not the print. It is everything around the print. A cartoon on a thin cheap tee shirt looks like a costume. But one small, quiet joke on a proper, soft, grown up sweater, in calm colors a grown woman would choose, reads completely differently. It reads as wit. It says the woman wearing this chose it, and knows exactly what she is doing. That distinction took me until 63 to work out, and a cardinal to teach me.

The sweater is called the Astrid

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.

It is a soft, roomy sweater in two colors, a pale powdery blue on top and cream below, with a clean line across the middle where they meet. And lying along that line, fast asleep as if it were a shelf put there for the purpose, is a little black cat. Head on its paw, tail hanging down into the cream. It is one small dry joke, beautifully done, on an otherwise perfectly calm sweater. They do the same sleepy cat in ten colors.

I should own up to something here. I do not even own a cat. I am the woman half the street calls when they go out of town and a cat needs feeding, and in all my years of looking after other people’s cats, this is the first one that has ever actually been mine. My daughter’s labrador sniffed it once when they visited, decided it was no threat, and went back to sleep on my kitchen floor. Sue finds the whole arrangement funnier than I do.

The rest is quietly right. It has that soft texture you normally only get in the things you would never answer the door in, and a relaxed roomy shape that asks nothing of you. It goes over jeans or leggings without a moment of thought, and when a cool front comes through it is exactly the layer the morning wants.

What happened in the bakery line

I wore it down to the bakery on Saturday morning, with my jeans, and I made no effort whatsoever. The line was out the door, as it always is on a Saturday, everybody after the same kolaches.

Three women asked me about it before I reached the counter. The lady in front of me turned around and said the cat had been making her smile since the door. Another asked where it was from and whether the colors came out as nice as they looked, and would not believe the answer to either. And the girl behind the counter, who cannot be more than twenty, leaned over the pastry case and said it had made her whole morning.

I have stood in that line most Saturdays for years. Nobody had ever said a word about anything I was wearing. I walked home with the bread under my arm feeling, and I know how silly this sounds, like a slightly different woman than the one who had walked down.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is honest. It runs from an S all the way to a 5XL, and it is the same relaxed shape the whole way up, not a different sweater once you pass a certain letter. I wish more places would bother with that.

Two. It is the comfortable option in disguise. It feels like the soft old things I used to hide in at home, and reads like something chosen. I have worn it for a whole Sunday with the coffee maker going and then straight out to the store, and nothing about it needed changing, holding in or thinking about.

Three. People talk to you. Not every day, and not crowds. But the cat starts something, a smile, a word in a line, a granddaughter pointing. After twenty years of clothes that made me invisible, I had forgotten clothes could do the opposite, and I find I like it far more than I expected.

About the price

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

The Astrid is $54.95. It was $110.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because you can pay more than that at the mall for a plain navy sweater that nobody will ever smile at. 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 run the sale to move the season’s stock while the cooler mornings are still in front of us.

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 had written, “Wore it to pick up my grandkids and it was the first time my clothes have ever been a talking point. Wonderfully soft too.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Sue is getting the green one for her birthday, and I am aware that this is how it spreads.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

Try to remember the last time something you wore made somebody smile. If you can, wonderful, you need nothing from me. But if you have to reach back past twenty years of navy to find it, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this sweater. Not because a cat on a sweater will change your life. It will not. But Sue was right, and it took me far too long to hear it. At our age you have earned the right to wear what makes you smile.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the boutique told me plainly that once this stock is gone, it is gone, so the middle sizes will disappear first. And if, like me, you are more of a cat-sitter than a cat owner, I can report this is the easiest one you will ever look after.

I have stopped dressing to go unnoticed.

Peggy