A letter from a reader

At 62, my granddaughter asked me why everything I own is the colour of a rainy day

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 put on in the morning.

But three different women have asked me about the same jumper in the last fortnight, and I have now explained it enough times at enough kitchen tables that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

It started with my granddaughter, who is eleven and has no filter whatsoever, going through the jumpers on the shelf in my bedroom looking for something to borrow.

Grandma, why is everything you own the colour of a rainy day?

She was not being unkind. She was just reading out what was in front of her. Grey. Charcoal. Navy. Another grey. A black one I had bought because it was sensible. Not one thing on that shelf had a colour you could name without sounding a bit gloomy about it.

How it happens

Nobody sets out to dress like this. You do not stand in a shop at fifty and decide that from now on you will wear the colour of a wet pavement.

What happens is that colour starts to feel like a decision, and grey does not. Grey goes with everything, grey does not show the marks, grey does not have an opinion. So you buy the grey one, telling yourself it is the practical choice, and you do that perhaps twice a year for fifteen years.

And the shops help you along. Walk into most of them looking for something for a woman our age and you will be shown a wall of charcoal and navy and black, with the colour kept over on the other side for somebody younger. After a while you stop even looking at that side. It stops feeling like it is for you.

Then one day an eleven year old opens your wardrobe and says the quiet part out loud.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I got most wrong, and I had believed it for years.

I thought that wearing colour at my age meant one of two things. Either you had given up and gone into the beige and the elasticated waists, or you were trying a bit too hard, and everyone could see it. I did not want to be either of those women, so I stayed in the grey, which felt like the safe middle.

What I had not understood is that grey is not neutral on a face like mine. It takes something out of it. Put a soft warm colour up near your face and it does quietly, for nothing, what I have spent a fortune on creams trying to do. Your skin looks warmer. Your eyes come forward. You look rested, and nobody can say why.

Safe and lifted were not a choice of one. I had simply never been shown the lifted version. That took me until 62 to work out.

Mine is the Pink

It is from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and they have their autumn sale on at the moment.

It is called the Mable. Mine is the soft dusty pink, which is nothing like the pink you are probably picturing. It is a powdery, grown up sort of pink, the colour of the inside of a shell. They do it in seven colours, though, including a cream, a deep red, a green and a proper plum, so there is a version of it for whatever you already have in the wardrobe.

The thing that makes it, and I did not appreciate this from the photographs, is the collar. It is a soft folded shawl collar that runs down both sides and meets in a deep neat V at the front. So it frames your face and opens up your neck at the same time, instead of closing everything in the way a high round neck does.

And the knit itself is fine and smooth and very soft, with a cashmere sort of feel to it, not one of those thick scratchy things that adds a stone. Ribbed collar, ribbed cuffs, ribbed hem, all neat. It sits to the hip and skims rather than clings.

The same hallway, six weeks apart

My daughter took the first of these last autumn without me really noticing, on the way out to my own birthday lunch. The second one she took a few weeks ago, in the same spot by the front door, because I asked her to.

It is the same woman, the same hallway and very nearly the same face. I have not lost weight, I have not had my hair done differently, and I am not wearing any more makeup in the second one than the first.

I looked at the two of them side by side on her phone for longer than I would like to admit. In the first one I look like somebody on her way to something. In the second one I look like somebody who is pleased to be going.

Three different women have asked me about it since. My friend Sue, who has never commented on a piece of clothing in thirty years, asked me at the garden centre whether I had done something different, and then asked where the jumper was from. That was the moment I thought I had better write this down.

Three things I have learned since

One. The colour has to be near your face. A colourful scarf in a drawer does nothing. It has to be the thing sitting under your chin, which is exactly where that open collar puts it. That is why this works and the pink cardigan I once bought and never wore did not.

Two. It is not a special occasion jumper. I had assumed I would save it. I have worn it to the shops, to the doctor, to my son's for Sunday lunch and out for a meal with a pair of dark trousers and my good earrings. It goes up and down without any effort at all, which is more than I can say for most of what I own.

Three. The grey has quietly stopped getting worn. Nothing dramatic happened. I did not have a clear out. The grey ones simply keep ending up at the bottom of the pile, and I have noticed I do not miss them.

About the price

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

The Mable is £39.95. It was £80.00.

My first thought was that it was still a fair amount for one jumper, until I sat down and worked out what I had spent over the years on grey ones I never once felt good in. It was a great deal more than forty pounds, and I could not tell you where a single one of them is now.

There is no catch that I have been able to find. They are a small boutique selling directly, without a shop on a high street to pay for, which is where the difference goes.

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. Real women, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

Then I ordered the cream one as well, which I had not planned on doing at all.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in my kitchen with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go upstairs and look at the shelf where your jumpers live. Not for long. Just count the colours. If you can do it on one hand and they are all some version of grey, then nothing is wrong with you and nothing is wrong with your taste. You have simply never been offered the other version, and now you have.

Two practical things. The autumn sale is on now, and it is the middle sizes that go first, which I found out the hard way when I went back for the cream. And do have a proper look at all seven colours before you choose, because the one that suits you may not be the one you expect. I would never have picked the pink off a screen.

I am 62 and I have started wearing colour again, and the only thing I regret is the fifteen years I spent not doing it.

Caroline