A letter from a reader

At 67, I have finally found the knitted jacket I was looking for

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 wear.

But three different women asked me about a knitted jacket at the village book swap on Thursday, and one of them got quite emotional about it, which I will explain. So it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

First, a theory I have now tested on every woman I know. Somewhere in your past, there was one perfect knitted jacket.

Mine came from a draughty little shop in the Scottish Highlands, decades ago. I wore it until it fell apart, and I have been comparing every knitted jacket to it since.

Soft pink, with a neat collar and buttons down the front. The sleeves ended in ribbed cuffs, and the hem had a tidy finish. Every jacket since had felt almost right, but not quite. You do not go looking for the lost favourite. You just quietly never stop.

How it happens

The perfect knitted jacket is always an accident. A holiday purchase, a market stall, a shop that no longer exists. You cannot go back for another, and the high street's answer is always nearly. Nearly the right colour, nearly the right shape, nearly the right details.

And nearly, with jackets, is somehow worse than not at all.

What I had wrong

I had decided they simply did not make them any more. That the soft knitted jacket with a collar and buttons belonged to a previous era of shops, along with proper haberdashers and assistants who knew your name.

It turns out somebody still makes them. It took a small boutique to bother, which no longer surprises me. The trick, I now understand, is restraint. A simple collar, buttons down the front, and neat ribbed edges. Nothing fussy, just the details that make it feel like a proper jacket.

The jacket is called Katrina

It is from Lily London, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

The jacket is called Katrina. A soft pink knitted jacket with a neat collar and buttons down the front. The long sleeves finish in ribbed cuffs, and the hem has the same tidy detail. It has the familiar ease of knitwear, with a shape that looks a little more put together.

It is easy to wear over whatever you put under it. I wear mine over a striped shirt with the collar out and a sliver of cuff showing, because some of us remember how a good knitted jacket should feel in the wardrobe.

What happened at the book swap

I wore it to the village book swap on Thursday, where the average conversation is about Ann Cleeves and whose turn it is on teas.

Three women asked about the jacket before I had swapped a single book. And then Christine, holding her paperbacks to her chest, told me about her own favourite knitted jacket, bought on a caravan holiday long ago and missed ever since. She went home and ordered the Katrina before supper.

That is not a recommendation. That is a reunion.

Three things I have learned since

One. The collar is the whole secret. It gives the jacket a neat outline and frames the neckline without needing a fussy pattern. The buttons and ribbed edges finish it off, and whoever designed the Katrina clearly understood that simple details can be just right.

Two. A knitted jacket is useful because it is easy to style. Wear it open over a top or button it up when you want a more finished look. It works with the familiar pieces already in your wardrobe.

Three. Check the product page for the current size options and full details. And there is a whole collection of knitted jackets to browse, which I am pacing myself through.

About the price

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

The Katrina is £34.95. It was £100.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that a knitted jacket with this sort of finish would cost more in the little wool shops, and anything under forty pounds would look a bit flimsy. The Katrina has the details I wanted: a knitted texture, a collar, buttons down the front and ribbed cuffs and hem. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is the price shown in their current sale.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and looked closely at the product details before I ordered. The collar, the buttons and the pink colour were exactly what I had been looking for. That was the thing that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If you also lost the perfect knitted jacket somewhere along the way, on a holiday, from a shop that is now a phone shop, stop assuming it is gone for good. Somebody is still making them, quietly, with the simple details in the right place, for under forty pounds.

Not because a jacket will change your life. It will not. But there is something in putting on a soft pink knit with a collar and buttons and feeling a draughty Highland shop come back to you for a moment, that I would not have paid three times this for, and got for £34.95.

Two practical things. The Katrina is listed in the current sale, and the product page has the latest size options and availability. There is a whole collection of knitted jackets to look through if you would like to compare styles.

The lost jacket has been found. Christine can confirm.

Maggie