At 62, nobody had said anything about what I was wearing in years
At 62, nobody had said anything about what I was wearing in years
Six things the Rosalind gets right that sensible jumpers 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 jumper. What I had noticed, and never said out loud to anybody, is that nobody had remarked on anything I was wearing for years. Not unkindly. Nobody said a word against it either. My clothes were perfectly fine and perfectly appropriate and completely beneath comment, and somewhere along the way I had decided that was simply what happens.
The jumper I am writing about is called the Rosalind, from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. A great yellow sun sitting high on the chest, and long rays fanning out across the whole of it, every one a different colour and knitted in a different stitch. 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.
Three women asked me about it on the first morning I wore it. Read on.
Here is the trap, and I suspect a good many of us are in it. At some point you decide that bright things are for the young, so you buy the navy one, and the grey one, and the one that goes with everything. Then you see a woman your own age in something with a bit of life in it, and she looks marvellous, and you think, well, she can carry it off. It never once occurred to me to ask who exactly had made the rule.
It was never the colour that made a thing look silly on a woman of 62. It is the shape. Get the shape right and you can wear whatever colour you like.
The Rosalind is the first thing I have bought in years that gets that right, and having had it on more or less constantly since it arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The morning it came. I did wonder if I had been brave or daft, right up until I put it on.
IT IS THE WHOLE OUTFIT ON ITS OWN
This is the part I had not expected. I put it on with the grey trousers I wear for everything, and I was finished. No necklace, no scarf, no standing in front of the mirror adding things and taking them off again. The print is a proper piece of work, a patchwork sunburst made up of dozens of little panels, each one its own colour and its own stitch, so the jumper has already done the job of looking like something. Everything else I own needs help. This needs none.
On the wardrobe door the night before, which is a thing I have not bothered doing since I was about thirty.
I put it on with black trousers and that was that. I have never owned anything before that did not need me to find something to go with it.
Jean M., MansfieldTHE COLLAR DOES WHAT A SCARF USED TO
The collar is high and soft and folds over on itself, and it is the reason I have stopped picking up a scarf on the way out. It sits close without any of that gripping feeling, it keeps the draught off the back of my neck, and it gives the whole thing a tidy, finished look at the top, which is exactly what I used to be trying to do with the scarf and never quite managing. There is something rather old-fashioned about it, in the way I mean as a compliment.
The collar, close up. The bands of colour run right round it.
Warm at the neck without that strangled feeling I get from most polo necks. I have worn it out with nothing over it.
Pauline R., BeestonIT SKIMS INSTEAD OF CLINGING
I will say the quiet part out loud, because I would have wanted somebody to say it to me. I have always kept away from anything bold because I assumed it would draw the eye straight to my middle. What I had got wrong is that it is a clingy cut that does that, not a colour. This one is made easy and relaxed, it drapes down off the shoulders rather than following you about, and it moves when you move. The pattern lies across it instead of stretching over it, and that turns out to make all the difference.
I am not a small woman and I had talked myself out of prints for years. This hangs beautifully and I wish I had found it sooner.
Sandra W., NewarkIT WORKS UNDER A COAT AND OVER A VEST
It is not one of those enormous thick jumpers that only works on its own and leaves you stuck once the weather turns. It is light enough to go under my coat without bunching up at the arms, and light enough to go over a thin vest on the cold mornings, which is how I have been wearing it since the middle of September. And it is striking enough that when the coat comes off indoors, you have not got to think about what is underneath, because what is underneath is the best bit.
Put out the night before for the garden centre. That is the entire outfit, and it took me a minute.
Layers under my winter coat with no bulk at all, then looks like the main event once I take the coat off.
Christine B., West BridgfordTHERE IS A COLOUR IN IT FOR EVERYTHING I ALREADY OWN
This sounds like the sort of thing people say, but it is simply true of a jumper with this many colours in it. There are warm oranges and golds in the sun, deep purples and blues and greens running down through the rays, and pinks and reds through the patchwork. So whatever you put with it is already in it somewhere. Mine has been out with grey trousers, with black, with a pair of ordinary blue jeans and with my navy skirt, and it has never once looked like an accident.
The sleeve. Every panel is a different little print, and the cuffs are ribbed purple.
Goes with the jeans, goes with the black trousers, goes with the navy. I did not expect that from something this colourful.
Marion T., SouthwellIT COMES IN SIX SIZES, AND THEY GO UP PROPERLY
Six sizes, S through to 3XL, which I mention because I know how that goes. You find the one nice thing and the sizes stop exactly where you need them to carry on. The cut is relaxed, so it is forgiving either way, and if you like a bit more room through the body for layering underneath there is nothing wrong with taking the size up. I am ordinarily a 14 and mine is comfortable with room to spare.
Ordered the 2XL and it fits lovely across the shoulders, which is usually where these things let me down.
Denise H., HucknallThe Rosalind, against the sensible jumpers I had been buying instead
I have a drawer of perfectly nice jumpers that nobody has ever mentioned. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Perfectly nice, and completely beneath comment
Needs a necklace or a scarf to look finished
The bright one in the shop was cut for a girl of twenty
A pattern that looks dated rather than deliberate
Sizes that stop just where you need them to go on
A print women actually stop and ask you about
The high collar finishes it, nothing to add
A proper grown-up jumper, easy and relaxed through the body
A sunburst knitted panel by panel, like a quilt
Six sizes, S through to 3XL
About the price
The Rosalind is £32.95 at the moment. It was £66.00.
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 few weeks of wearing it nearly every day, 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.
Tuesday morning, nowhere in particular to be. I have rather stopped saving it for occasions.
If it has been a long time since anybody said anything to you about what you had on, I would start here. It is only a jumper. But I had quietly accepted that going unnoticed was part of being my age, and it turns out that was never true, and that putting it right was a good deal easier than I had made it. Go and have a look while your size is still there.
Caroline
ROSALIND | Retro Sunburst Print Turtleneck
- Patchwork sunburst print, dozens of panels, a quilt-like look
- High collar with a retro, polished finish
- Easy relaxed fit that drapes rather than clings
- Light enough to layer under a jacket or over a camisole
- Jewel tones, warm oranges, deep purples and greens
- Six sizes, S to 3XL
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The middle sizes go first.