A letter from a reader
At 62, I gave away every blazer I owned. Last month I bought one back.
I have never written one of these before, and I nearly did not. But I have told this story to enough friends now that it seemed easier to write it down.
Three summers ago, the week after I retired, I filled two garbage bags with blazers and drove them to the donation bin behind the church on Rutledge Avenue. Thirty-one years of them. Navy, charcoal, one unfortunate plum. I felt pleased with myself the whole way home.
What replaced them happened so slowly I never noticed. A soft cardigan. Then the same soft cardigan. Then whatever was folded over the chair by the window. Nothing wrong with any of it. But there is a difference between comfortable and unbothered, and somewhere in there I crossed over without deciding to.
Then Ruth turned up at the market in one
It was a Saturday in June at Marion Square, and Ruth was standing at the peach table in a blazer. My first thought, honestly, was oh Ruth, no.
Then I got closer, and it was not the sort of blazer I had given away at all. Paisley, in a jacquard that caught the light when she moved, cut close through the body and worn wide open over a white tee. No shoulder pads. Nothing about it said meeting.
It is from Dorothy & June, a small Charleston boutique. I looked them up that night with my glasses on and a cup of decaf, fully expecting to be underwhelmed, and sat there scrolling for forty minutes instead. Herringbone with contrast trim. One covered in embroidered flowers. A boho stripe. An ivory one with the embroidery worked right into it. I ordered the paisley.
What happened at the birthday lunch
I wore it downtown the following Thursday, with jeans and my good sandals.
Three women asked me where it was from before the check came. One of them was Carol, who I have known since our boys were in Little League and who has never once commented on anything I have worn. She said it looked like me, which I have decided is the nicest thing anyone has said about my clothes in a decade.
The compliments are not the part I keep coming back to, though. The restaurant had the air conditioning set somewhere around February, the way they all do here in July, and for once I was not the woman at the table with a cardigan pulled round her shoulders like a shawl. I was dressed. I sat two hours and never thought about what I had on.
That is the thing about a summer blazer down here. It is not for the heat. It is for the air conditioning, and the porch after the sun goes, and the drive home once the car has cooled.
Three things I have learned since
One. The pattern does all the work. A plain black blazer reads as a uniform, which is why I never missed mine. A paisley, or a herringbone, or one with flowers embroidered into it reads as something you picked out. Same shape, completely different message.
Two. It makes everything underneath look deliberate. The tee is the same tee, the jeans the same jeans, and I have not bought a single other thing. But put one of these over the top and the whole outfit looks considered, on mornings I plainly was not.
Three. There is more than one shape. I assumed a blazer was a blazer. There are fitted ones, tailored ones, and a longline jacket that comes past the hip, which is the one my sister has her eye on because nothing that stops at her waist has ever suited her.
About the price
I will be honest, the price made me suspicious more than anything.
The blazers are $59.95 to $114.95 at the moment. They were $179.95 to $349.95.
My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because a jacket cut like this usually costs a great deal more, and I had paid close to the full price for the ones I wore to work.
There is no catch that I have found. It is a small boutique selling directly, and they run a summer sale to move the season's stock. I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you are doing now. Just under nine hundred of them, sitting at 4.8 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some sites, which if anything made me trust it more. Shipping was free and there is a thirty-day return window, so the worst case was a trip to the post office.
I did not need the worst case. I went back a week later for the ivory embroidered one.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you and I were on my porch with a glass of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.
If you cleared out the blazers when you retired, or never bought one because they felt like a costume for somebody else's job, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to have a look. These are not those jackets. They have flowers on them.
Not because a blazer changes anything. It does not. But catching sight of yourself in a shop window and thinking well, there she is, is a small thing I had stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting it either.
The sale is on now, and once a style sells through, that is the end of it. If you are torn between two, they take a little more off when you buy more than one, which is how I ended up with the ivory.
I have two blazers again. Not thirty-one. Two, and I chose both of them myself.
Amy
The Summer Blazer Collection
★★★★★4.8 out of 5 from 896 reviews
$269.95 $99.95
- Printed, embroidered and jacquard designs — paisley, herringbone, florals, boho stripe
- Fitted and tailored cuts, plus a longline jacket
- Layers over a tee and jeans, or over a dress for dinner
- The light jacket a Charleston summer actually calls for
- Buy more and save a little more at checkout
- Free US shipping
Summer sale on now. Once a style sells through, it is gone.
Amy Johnson is 62 and lives in Charleston. She is not a fashion writer.
Dorothy & June · Free US Shipping · 30 day returns
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