A letter from a reader

At 62, I stopped wearing black next to my face

I have never written to a shop before, and I did not expect my first letter to be about a jumper.

Here is the truth of it. At some point black became my uniform. Black jumper, black trousers, black cardigan over the top. It was easy, it all went together, and I told myself it was smart. Then my daughter showed me the photographs from Christmas and I looked grey and tired in every one of them. Not older. Just washed out, as though somebody had turned the colour down on me.

It was not my face that was letting me down. It was what I had been putting next to it for the last ten years.

So I carried on in black anyway, because everything else in the shops seemed to be either a bright colour I would not wear or a cream that looked like it belonged to somebody else.

Then I saw it on a friend at a birthday lunch

My friend Pauline came in wearing a soft cream jumper with a folded collar that sat open in a V, over her usual black trousers. She looked rested. That was the word I kept coming back to. I asked her where it was from before we had even ordered, and I told her she looked well, which made her laugh, because she had been up half the night with her sister in hospital. She said it was the Mable, from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered mine that evening.

What happened at the next lunch

I wore it a fortnight later with the same black trousers I always wear, so nothing about my morning was any different. Three different women asked me where it was from, and my friend Sue told me I looked like I had made an effort, which I have decided to take as a compliment. One of them asked if I had been away.

I had not been away. I had simply put something soft and light up near my face instead of something black, and apparently that is all it takes.

Three things I have learned since

One. It is the colour nearest your face that counts. Everything below the waist can stay exactly as it is. I wear my black trousers and my dark jeans with it and nothing else in my wardrobe had to change.

Two. Cream is kinder than white. A hard white can be just as unforgiving as black. This is a warm cream with a bit of oatmeal in it, and it sits softly against the skin.

Three. The collar does the finishing. It folds back on itself and opens into a V, so there is a bit of shape at the neck without a scarf, a necklace or any fuss at all.

About the price

When I saw the price I was suspicious. Something this soft, I assumed, would either cost a small fortune or look cheap the moment it came out of the bag.

The Mable is £37.95. It was £80.

There is no catch. They have their autumn sale on, delivery is free, and it arrived looking exactly as it did in the pictures.

I did go and read the reviews before I ordered a second one. 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 more. One woman had written, "I have worn black for twenty years. I put this on and my husband asked if I had been away somewhere." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you came round and we sat out on the porch with a cup of tea, this is what I would tell you.

Do not throw the black out. Just stop wearing it up by your chin. Change the one thing that sits next to your face and see what people say to you that week.

It does not look like it was made for somebody half my age, and it does not look like I have given up either.

Caroline