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Come winter, aside from the obvious seasonally appropriate staples (cue wool coats, leather boots and cashmere knits), my most-worn piece is easily a grey wool skirt. My collection includes one full-length style, with a crossover flap and decorative buttons at the hip; another in deep charcoal, box-pleated and calf-grazing; a mini version fastened with a traditional Highland kilt pin to guard against gusts; and a lighter wool-cotton blend that sees me through those early, deceptive weeks of autumn warmth. All of them are vintage, unearthed in charity shops or found during the depths of resale app doom-scrolling.
For the past few years, these grey woollen skirts have become the backbone of my cold-weather wardrobe, their blanket-like thickness relied upon when the temperatures plummet, and their quiet polish unmatched in my eyes. Perhaps it's their nostalgic pull: like many of our most-loved garments these days, they carry echoes of the past. The memory of my secondary-school uniform, a charcoal skirt, scrawled with Tipp-Ex and rolled up at the waistband, for example, which I suppose in retrospect you could call an early exercise in personal styling.
Now, years on, my grey wool skirts occupy a place of pride in my autumn/winter wardrobe. Unlike their louder tartan or check-print cousins, which were everywhere at fashion month, the plain grey wool skirt is understated, quietly powerful, and even a little subversive. Something you might initially dismiss as "grannish" proves, when styled right, to be the epitome of pared-back chic.