In lieu of physical affection, there’s something, at least partly, therapeutic about this item of dress. Acting as a vote of self-confidence. Whether walking into a room full of strangers, seeing an ex, or snuggling up to, tearily, after the aforementioned. (Been there, my friend).

The dimension of intentional roleplay to dressing up in colder climes can be exquisitely seductive. Like permission to puzzle-piece together, unlock, different parts of our personality. Take, for example, a character written in Nora and Delia Ephron’s play Love, Loss and What I Wore, whereby she discovers the joy of boots whilst at university. “Freshman year I had two pairs. One was golden brown, one was deeper brown, and I wore them with really, really short skirts,” she says. “I thought my boots gave me a kind of mysterious, bohemian charisma, tough but tender, rugged but sensuous, poetic but un-self-conscious, like Joni Mitchell.” 

Winter is all too often cast in a disapproving light. A darker, depressing, chasm of discontent. The antithesis of summer, thou art more lovely and more temperate. When we should pursue this period, instead, with boundless optimism. An exercise in potentiality and performance. To show off, in other words. Get reacquainted with the feels-redundant-it’s-been-a-while concept of uniform - those that reveal as much as it conceals. Pick ‘n’ mixing tactile textures, colours, VOLUME, hosiery, embellishment. For mooching around muses, here, see Jennifer Cavalieri’s preppy par excellence to the queen of cosy wintercore, Sally Albright. 

Though one myth that continues to bore me about the coming months is the lazy suggestion that it somehow signals hanging up desirability. That layering equals unsexy. In fact, I’d argue the big cover up can be the most desirable of sartorial treaties. No shade on baring flesh, I’m absolutely all for this, but to instead allude to what’s underneath, in varying degrees, can be undeniably erotic.

The curvature of a waist in a mohair wool rollneck. Legs decorated in denier (for those who argue tights are not titillating, google ‘The Graduate film poster’). A fuzzy coat built to be touched, to be taken off, at some point.

Oh, I’ve missed you.