At 62, I found something bright I can change my mind about
At 62, I found something bright I can change my mind about
Six things the Marlyne gets right that bright things usually get wrong, from a woman who is not a fashion writer.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have never once sat down to write about a jacket. I will also tell you something I have never admitted to anybody, which is why I stopped buying colourful clothes. It was not that I did not like them. It was that you have to decide at eight in the morning, and then you are stuck with the decision until you get home. If my nerve went at eleven, and it usually did, there was nothing to be done about it.
The thing I am writing about is called the Marlyne, from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. A zip up hoodie with a golden sun on the shoulder and rays going off across the front and down the sleeves, pieced together like patchwork, with a white zip and a white lined hood. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition that I could be completely honest in it.
The zip turned out to be the whole point. Read on.
Here is the trap, and it is a quiet one. Everybody tells you to wear more colour at our age and nobody mentions the part where you have to hold your nerve about it for nine hours in front of people you know. So you buy the navy one again, and you tell yourself you are being sensible, and what you are actually being is careful. I had been careful for about twenty years and I had a wardrobe that proved it.
I did not dislike colour. I disliked being committed to it before I had even had my breakfast.
The Marlyne is the first thing I have owned that lets me out of that, and having worn it most days since it came, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The morning it came. Brighter in the hand than on the screen, which I had rather braced myself for.
THE ZIP LETS YOU DECIDE HOW MUCH OF IT SHOWS
This is the whole reason it works and I have not seen it anywhere else. The zip runs the full length, so the same jacket does two completely different jobs. Worn open over a plain top you get a line of colour down each side and the white hood showing at the neck, and it is quiet enough for the doctor's waiting room. Zipped right to the top it is the whole sunburst and it is not quiet at all. I decide at the front door, and on the days I get it wrong I can change it at lunchtime.
The same jacket worn open. Nobody has ever said a word about it like this.
Open for the school run, zipped up for coffee afterwards. I had never thought of a zip as being for that.
Sylvia H., IlkestonTHE PRINT IS A PROPER PIECE OF WORK
There is a difference between a bright thing and a considered thing, and it matters enormously at our age. This is a sunburst pieced together like patchwork, a golden sun sitting up on the shoulder and rays going out from it across the front and all the way down the sleeves, every one a different colour and a different little pattern. It does not look like somebody reached for the brightest thing in the box. It looks like it was designed, and that is the difference between people asking about it and people looking away politely.
Hung up ready for the morning, which tells you how I feel about it.
Bright but not silly. There is a line and this stays the right side of it.
Pamela G., KirkbyTHE HOOD IS LINED, AND IT PULLS IN
The hood is lined in white all the way through, with two white strings so you can pull it in when the wind gets up, which around here it does from about the end of September. I had got used to hoods being an ornament sewn on the back of a coat, the sort you would never actually put over your head. This one I use. And the white lining is what stops the whole thing looking like too much, because there is something plain and clean sitting right up next to your face.
The hood, lined in white with the strings to pull it in.
A hood you would actually use, and the white inside it lifts the whole thing.
Christine A., EastwoodTHERE IS ROOM FOR A JUMPER UNDERNEATH
It is cut relaxed rather than close, so there is room to put something on under it, which is the thing I always check now and almost never used to. A jacket that only works over a thin top is a jacket you get about five weeks out of. I have had this on over a shirt in September and over a proper thick jumper in October and it has not pulled tight across the back or ridden up at the front either time.
Plenty of room over a jumper without looking like a tent. I went for my usual size and it was right.
Dorothy M., RuddingtonPLAIN TROUSERS AND YOU ARE FINISHED
You put it on over plain trousers or plain jeans and you stop. There is nothing to add, nothing to match it to, and no standing in front of the wardrobe working out what goes. Everything else I own needs a second thing before it looks like an outfit. On a cold Tuesday when I have got to be somewhere by nine, that is worth a great deal more than I would have guessed.
The zip. White, all the way up, and it does the deciding.
Black trousers and this and I am out of the door. It has halved how long I spend getting ready.
Hilary B., CotgraveIT GOES FROM A UK 8 TO A UK 24
Eight sizes, UK 8/10 right the way up to UK 22/24, and I mention it because I know precisely how that goes. You find the one thing you actually want and the sizes stop just where you need them to keep going, and it is always the interesting things that stop first. My sister is three sizes up from me and she has one as well, which is the first time in years we have been able to say that about anything.
Ordered the 22/24 and it fits properly across the back and the shoulders. That almost never happens.
Maureen D., BulwellThe Marlyne, against the bright thing I would normally have talked myself out of
I have talked myself out of a great many colourful things over the years. Here is what was different, laid out plainly.
You commit at eight and you are stuck until you get home
One setting, and that setting is loud
A hood sewn on the back that you would never use
Cut close, so nothing goes underneath it
Sizes that stop somewhere in the middle
A full length zip, so you can change your mind at lunchtime
Quiet worn open, the whole sunburst zipped up
A hood lined in white that pulls in with drawstrings
Relaxed, with room for a jumper underneath
Eight sizes, UK 8/10 through to UK 22/24
About the price
The Marlyne is £34.95 at the moment. It was £70.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that the middle sizes go first and once the autumn stock has gone it can be a wait for it to come back. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually the point at which I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and a good few weeks of wearing it most days, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
Out to the garden and back. The sun goes right across the back as well.
If you have talked yourself out of colour because you could not face being stuck with it all day, I would start here. It is only a zip. But it turned out that the zip was the thing standing between me and about twenty years of navy, and I would rather have found that out sooner. Go and have a look while your size is still there.
Caroline
MARLYNE | Sunburst Print Zip Hoodie
- Sunburst print in a patchwork look, gold through to purple and green
- Full length white zip, wear it open or zipped right up
- Hood lined in white, with drawstrings to pull it in
- White cuffs, relaxed fit, hip length
- Room to layer a jumper underneath
- Eight sizes, UK 8/10 (S) to UK 22/24 (5XL)
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The middle sizes go first.