At 62, I went through my whole wardrobe and not one thing had anything on it
At 62, I went through my whole wardrobe and not one thing had anything on it
Six things the Annalise gets right, from a woman who owns forty garments and about four decisions.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
I was putting a pile of washing away on a Tuesday and I stopped with my hand on the drawer, because I had just noticed something and it was slightly horrible. Every single thing in there was plain. Not plain as in beige, although there is plenty of that too. Plain as in there is nothing on it. No edge, no trim, no texture, no detail. A neck, two sleeves, a hem that simply stops. Forty-odd garments and I do not think one of them has a single thing on it that somebody sat down and decided.
I counted. In the whole wardrobe there were four. A row of buttons on a shirt. Some stitching on a cuff. Two of them were cardigans.
Nothing in there is wrong, exactly. That is the problem with it.
How it happens
You do not choose plain. Plain chooses you, slowly, because it is what is on the rail and because it is what never goes wrong. Anything with a detail on it is a risk. It might be too young, or too much, or the sort of thing that looks lovely on the hanger and ridiculous in the changing room light. So you put it back and you pick up the one next to it, which has nothing on it, and that one is fine.
Do that for fifteen years and you have what I have got. A drawer where everything goes with everything, because there is nothing in any of it to clash with.
And it does something slightly sad to how you get dressed, which is that there is nothing to look forward to. You are not putting anything on. You are covering yourself up neatly and going out.
What I had wrong
I thought the alternative to plain was loud. That if I wanted something with a bit of interest in it I would be into prints and brooches and scarves with a pattern, and that is not me and never has been, so plain it was.
The opposite of plain is not loud. It is finished.
Something can be entirely one colour, in the quietest cream you have ever seen, and still have four or five things about it that somebody thought about. The way the knit is worked. What happens at the neck. Whether the hem just stops or does something. None of that is noisy. You would not pick it out across a room. You would only notice it if you were close, or if you were the one wearing it, and it turns out that is enough.
The Annalise came from Nottingham Boutique, a little shop that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It is a cream knit with a ruffled hem, and it was thirty nine pounds ninety five.
The day it came. The hem spills out of the fold, which tells you most of what you need to know.
THE KNIT ITSELF HAS SOMETHING GOING ON
It is worked in an openwork pattern, rows of little diamonds made out of small holes, all over the front and the back. Hold it up to the window and the light comes through them. It is the same cream as the rest of it so there is no contrast to shout about, but it means the surface is doing something instead of being a flat wall of knitting. The sleeves are a different texture again, nubblier, which I did not spot for two days and then could not unsee.
Close up. The little holes are the pattern, not a fault.
You have to be near it to see the diamonds, and then you cannot stop looking at it. Nothing else I own does that.
Eileen M., FlinthamTHE NECK HAS AN EDGE ON IT
A round neck, sitting where a round neck should sit, but the edge is scalloped rather than a plain band of rib. Little even curves all the way round. It is about the smallest decision anybody could make about a jumper and it is the difference between a neckline and just the place where the knitting stops. I have worn it with nothing round my neck at all, which I normally cannot do, because there is already something going on up there.
The scalloped edge is so pretty and I did not even see it in the photographs. It is better in person.
Jean B., GranbyTHERE ARE THREE LITTLE FLOWERS ON THE FRONT
Three small knitted rosettes, about the size of a two pound coin, sitting in a row across the front where the knit ends and the ruffles start. Cream, like everything else, so they read as texture rather than as decoration. They are the thing people touch, which I had not anticipated. Two different women have put a hand out and felt them, which is a strange compliment to receive but I will take it.
My granddaughter spotted the flowers straight away and said they were like little roses. She is eight and she is right.
Pauline T., WidmerpoolTHE HEM DOES NOT JUST STOP
This is the part I bought it for. Where the knitting finishes there are three tiers of a fine, sheer, pleated fabric, layered over one another and hanging several inches below. They move when you move. They are a completely different material from the knit above them, light and floaty where the jumper is solid, so it reads as two things at once. And practically, the tiers carry on down past the point where a jumper would normally stop and cling, which if you are my shape is not a small consideration.
Where the knitting stops and the three tiers start. You can see the light through them.
The layers skim right over the middle instead of sitting on it. That is the whole reason I kept it.
Hazel D., Sutton BoningtonIT IS STILL A JUMPER
I want to say this plainly because the photographs make it look delicate, and delicate often means cold. It is a proper knit. Long sleeves with ribbed cuffs that sit snug at the wrist, which is where I feel the cold first and where most of the pretty things I have tried on have let me down with a wide floppy sleeve. I have worn it to the garden centre and to a lunch and been comfortable in both, which is more than my good blouses manage.
Laid out flat. It has the weight of a jumper, which the photographs do not quite tell you.
Expected something flimsy from the pictures. It is a proper warm knit with a pretty hem on it.
Marion H., Colston BassettNONE OF IT IS TRYING TOO HARD
I nearly did not order it, and the reason was that I looked at the flowers and the ruffles and thought, that is a lovely thing for somebody about thirty. I was wrong, and I think the reason I was wrong is that every single one of those details is in the same cream as the rest of it. Nothing is picked out in a contrast. There is no lace, no bow, no sparkle, nothing that announces itself. It is all texture, and texture reads as quality rather than as youth.
I am seventy one and I was worried it would look silly on me. It does not. It all being one colour is why.
Brenda A., Barton in FabisThe Annalise, against the cream jumper already in that drawer
I own a cream jumper. I have owned a cream jumper continuously since about 1994. Here is the honest comparison, and it is not really about cream.
Round neck, two sleeves, a hem that stops
Flat knitting, nothing to see at any distance
Nothing on it that anybody decided
Clings exactly where I would rather it did not
Perfectly fine, and I have never once looked forward to it
A scalloped neck, three flowers, three tiers
Openwork diamonds you notice when you are close
Four or five things somebody thought about
The tiers carry on past where a jumper would cling
The thing I now reach for first
About the price
It is £39.95. It was £80.00.
Forty pounds for something with this much going on made me suspicious, because detail is exactly where the money goes. Openwork is slower to knit than plain. A scalloped edge is more work than a band of rib. Three rosettes have to be made separately and attached. Three gathered tiers are three times the fabric and three times the hemming.
So I half expected the details to be the giveaway, and they are not. The flowers are properly attached rather than tacked on, the scallops are even all the way round the neck, and the tiers are each gathered rather than just cut and left. I am not going to tell you it is a hand-finished thing from a little shop in Italy. I am telling you I looked for the corner they had cut and I did not find it in any of the places I expected.
I went and read the reviews afterwards, which is the wrong order, I know. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some sites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, "It is the only thing I own that I put on and then look down at." That would have decided it for me, had I read it first.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you were sat here with a cup of tea I would send you upstairs to your own drawer, and I would ask you to find me four things in it that somebody made a decision about.
Because I do not think most of us decided to dress like this. I think we were handed plain, over and over, by shops that had worked out it was the safest thing to sell us, and we took it because it was never wrong. And a wardrobe where nothing is wrong sounds like a success right up until the morning you realise there is also nothing in it you are pleased to see.
I had not been choosing simple all these years. I had been choosing nothing, and calling it simple.
You do not need a different wardrobe. One thing with something on it. That is the whole experiment, and it costs forty pounds.
Caroline
ANNALISE | Elegant Ruffle Sweater
- Delicate openwork knit in a diamond pointelle pattern
- A floaty three-tier sheer ruffle hem that moves as you do
- Three knitted flowers across the front, in the same cream
- Round crew neck with a softly scalloped edge
- Long sleeves with ribbed cuffs to keep your wrists warm
- Relaxed fit, UK 8/10 (S) to UK 18/20 (3XL)
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price.