Real stories · Softer than a coat, smarter than a cardigan

Too mild for a coat, too cold for a cardigan — this soft mid-length jacket is the answer to nine months of British weather

A layer for the in-between weather — too mild for the winter coat, too sharp for just a cardigan — that's the gap in my wardrobe that took years to fill. I'm 67, and British weather lives almost entirely in that gap: the morning that starts crisp, turns warm and finishes drizzling, usually within one dog walk.

What I wanted was one soft, easy layer I could wear from September to May without ever checking the forecast first.

Then I found the Aurelissia from a British label called York Boutique — a soft mid-length jacket, and I chose the grey, which goes with every single thing I own.

The trick is that it sits exactly between a cardigan and a coat. The fabric is soft and brushed, so it feels like knitwear against you, but the cut has proper shape — buttons, a neat line, mid-length so it covers the hips — so it reads as a jacket, not a comfy. And then there's the soft hood: not a raincoat hood, just enough for the drizzle the forecast forgot, which in Yorkshire is a weekly service. Relaxed enough for a jumper underneath in November, light enough over a t-shirt now.

Soft as a favourite cardigan, shaped like a proper jacket, with a hood for the drizzle the forecast forgot — it covers exactly the nine months when a coat is too much and a cardigan isn't enough.

It has quietly become the most-used hook by the door: every morning walk with Winnie, the school run, the market, reading in the garden until the warmth gives up. My friend Barbara calls it my 'wearable blanket with a waist', which she means as an insult and I take as a review.

It was £34.95 in the sale, half the usual £70. I'd checked before ordering that I could send it back if the fit was off — you can, within a fortnight, and the delivery's free — so there was nothing lost by trying. It comes in eight colours and in sizes UK 8/10 to 18/20.

If your hallway hooks also hold a too-warm coat and a too-thin cardigan and nothing in between, do treat yourself to a look. The Aurelissia is rated 4.6 out of 5 by more than 240 women, it's £34.95 in the sale instead of £70 — half price — and the middle sizes always seem to go first.