A letter from Dianne
I have carried a sensible navy jacket around for forty years in case the weather turned. These are the first two jackets I have ever written a letter about.
Six things two printed blazers get right that every jacket I ever took along just in case got wrong, written down by a customer, not a shop.
Dianne Prescott · Customer · Epping, Sydney · 5 min read
I am 64, and in forty years of dressing for Australian weather I have never left the house for anything important without something sensible over my arm. Navy, usually. It has come to weddings, to Christmas lunches in clubs with the air conditioning set for penguins, and to every evening that started out warm. And every time it goes on, the outfit I took an hour over disappears under it. Then this spring Jenny from over the road and I went down to Melbourne for three days, and at four o’clock on a tram to St Kilda, I met the two women who put a stop to it.
It had been 33 degrees at lunchtime. Anyone who knows Melbourne knows what comes next. The cool change came up the bay, the temperature fell off a cliff, and a whole tram full of people in sundresses sat there with their arms folded. Except for two sisters across the aisle, Marcia and Lois, both well past seventy, who looked as if they had planned it. Marcia had on a jacket in deep green marble with a band of gold across the chest. Lois had the same jacket, the same cut exactly, covered in purple flowers. I asked them, plainly, before we got to Fitzroy Street. They are the Honorine and the Bellamira, from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly making lovely things for women our age for a few years now. I ordered the Honorine the week I got home, fully expecting to send it back. I did not, and I went back for the Bellamira, and I wrote to the boutique to tell them why. They asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read. So here it is, the six things these get right.
Jackets, if you have looked lately, come in two piles. The first pile is the sensible one, navy and black and beige, which keeps the draught off and makes you look as if you have come to read the meter. The second pile is the floaty one, the long soft wraps that are meant to be interesting, and that hang off you like something you were handed at the door.
A jacket with a proper shape, or a jacket anyone would want to look at. I stopped accepting that a woman has to choose, and two sisters on a tram were the proof.
The foreshore at St Kilda the next time the weather turned. The Honorine, and for once nobody’s arms were folded.
The jacket is the outfit, not the thing over it
This is what stopped me on the tram. The boutique says the print is the piece people notice, and I can report that it is correct, because I noticed it from across an aisle while freezing. Every jacket I have owned was chosen so that nobody would. The Honorine is a deep emerald marble veined with gold, and the Bellamira is a field of purple and lilac cosmos flowers on midnight blue. When the jacket is the interesting part, it does not matter what is underneath it. I have stopped taking an hour.
The Honorine on the back of a kitchen chair in Epping. That gold is a print, and it stops people anyway.
“I wore a plain black dress I have had for ten years and got asked about my outfit for the first time since my wedding.”
Margaret H., ElwoodIt shapes the waist without pulling
I tried every sensible jacket in Sydney over the years, and they were either a box or a corset. This one is properly tailored and it comes in at the waist, but the boutique says it does so without pulling, and I raised both arms in the bedroom mirror to check. I also sat down in it, drove in it and reached for the top shelf at Bunnings in it. It stayed where it was and so did I. Graham looked up from the cricket and asked whether it was new, which in forty years of marriage is a first for a jacket.
The Bellamira on the way to coffee in Epping, with the jacaranda trying to compete.
“I gave up on jackets because I could never lift my arms in them. I had this one on all through my granddaughter’s party.”
Sue T., SandringhamOne gold button, and nothing else to fuss with
I counted, because I always do. There is one button, in gold, at the waist, and a plain notched lapel, and that is the whole of it. No row of brass to line up, and no belt to lose. It looks right done up, and it looks right open, which the boutique says as well and which I tested in the doorway of a very warm restaurant. Thirty years on a front desk teaches you to appreciate anything that only needs doing once.
One button. I checked both jackets, in case the second one had got ideas.
“One button and I am out the door. I have no patience left for a row of them.”
Christine D., MordiallocLight enough to bring, and it still holds its line
This is the one that matters at this time of year. I am not going to carry something heavy across a car park in late spring on the off chance. The boutique describes these as light but structured, keeping a crisp shape from morning right through to evening, and that matches what I have seen. I had the Honorine over my arm all through a warm Saturday, then on for the air conditioning at Lyn’s club, and it came home looking the way it went out. The old navy could not have managed the first part.
“Our club keeps the air conditioning like a butcher’s fridge. This comes along to every lunch now, and it still looks smart at the end of it.”
Pam W., Port MelbourneIt goes over what you already own
The boutique suggests cream trousers, denim or a simple roll neck, and I can add a plain summer dress and the white t-shirt I wear to walk Banjo. I have had the Honorine over cream trousers for a long lunch and the Bellamira over jeans for coffee, and neither one needed a new pair of shoes or a conversation with myself. Lois, on the tram, had hers on over a plain navy frock that I would have walked straight past on a hanger. That was rather the point.
The afternoon the second one arrived. I laid them out to make sure I had not gone mad.
“Over jeans to the shops, over my good trousers to my nephew’s engagement. Same jacket, and it looked right both times.”
Joy K., HamptonS to 5XL, and you will not meet yourself coming the other way
They go from an S to a 5XL, which is more than I can say for most things this shape, and there are twelve designs in the collection, every one of them a print. I lost an evening to it while Graham watched the golf. A woman asking for a jacket like this is hoping not to walk into a Christmas lunch and find three others in it, and I have not yet met a soul in either of mine, apart from Marcia and Lois. The navy has gone to the op shop. Jenny from over the road, who has never paid me a compliment in her life, looked at the Bellamira and said I looked like a person who had been somewhere.
The wardrobe door in Epping, in the space where the navy used to be.
“I am not a small woman and I have never owned a jacket I wanted to be seen in. I went back for a second one in a different print.”
Helen B., BeaumarisThe Honorine and the Bellamira, against the jacket over your arm
You can buy a jacket almost anywhere. I know, because I have been carrying one around for forty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Goes on and the outfit disappears
A box or a corset, and nothing between
A row of buttons, and a belt if you are unlucky
The same one as everyone else at the table
Nobody has ever asked where you got it
The jacket is the part people look at
Shapes the waist without pulling
One gold button, right open or fastened
A print you will not see everywhere
Asked about on a freezing tram in St Kilda
About the price
I will be straightforward about the price, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. Both of them are $90.95, and both were $182.00.
The boutique says the spring sale price is about making room for the summer stock, selling directly, with no middleman taking a cut, and that at this price they are barely making anything on them. That is their arithmetic, not mine. What I can tell you is that I have paid more than that for a navy jacket that nobody has ever looked at twice, and I have now bought two of these.
If you have spent forty years putting something sensible on over the outfit you actually wanted people to see, these are the two I would hand you instead.
Dianne
The Honorine & Bellamira Blazers
- ✓Honorine: deep emerald marble veined with gold
- ✓Bellamira: purple and lilac cosmos on midnight blue
- ✓Tailored, shapes the waist without pulling
- ✓One gold button and a notched lapel, right open or fastened
- ✓Light but structured, hip length, S to 5XL
- ✓Free delivery across Australia
Spring sale on now. The middle sizes are already going.