Real stories · Cardigan comfort, blazer polish

The knitted blazer that feels like my favourite cardigan but reads as 'smart' — the texture is the whole trick

A jacket with the polish of a blazer and the comfort of a cardigan — I'd genuinely started to believe you had to pick one. I'm 67, and stiff blazers and I have fallen out: the shoulders that fight you when you reach for anything, the crease across the back after one car journey, the general feeling of being upholstered. But my soft cardigans, bless them, read as 'staying in' no matter what I pair them with.

What I wanted was the impossible middle: something structured enough to look deliberate and soft enough to actually live in.

Then I found the Veylinne from a British label called York Boutique — a blazer with elegant details, and the detail that matters most is what it's made like.

The whole trick is the texture. It's a knitted cable-textured fabric cut like a blazer — tailored through the waist, neat little stand collar, proper buttons — so from across the room it reads as smart, but on the body it moves like a knit. It's light yet structured, which means no fighting the shoulders and no crease across the back after the school run. And because the cable texture is a detail in itself, it looks finished without a necklace or a scarf — the jacket does its own accessorising.

It has the shape of a blazer — tailored waist, neat collar, buttons — but the cable texture and the give of a knit. I can reach, drive and hug grandchildren in it, and it still reads as 'made an effort'.

It has quickly become the thing I reach for when I want to look pulled-together without committing to stiffness: coffee mornings, the doctor's, lunch in town. My daughter tried it on and pronounced it 'sneaky' — smart from a distance, cardigan up close — which is exactly right.

It was £34.95 in the sale, down from £80. 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 six colours and in sizes UK 8/10 to 16/18.

If you've also fallen out with stiff blazers but refuse to live in cardigans, do treat yourself to a look. The Veylinne is rated 4.7 out of 5 by more than 280 women, it's £34.95 in the sale instead of £80, and the middle sizes always seem to go first.