Why utility items are the best fashion investment

I went a bit wild the other day and bought myself a jacket I’d been fantasising about for some time. I didn’t need it — it was very much a luxury purchase — but then, it had been winking at me for weeks from the window display of a shop I pass each day on my way to work. ‘Buy me,’ it would whisper as I strode past. ‘Go on. Splurge. Live a little.’ So I did.

The fact that this particular shop happens to specialise in camping gear and hillwalking apparel does not make it, in my view, any less of a luxury jacket. If anything, it makes it more of one. Well, a luxury anorak at any rate. It is dark blue, largely shapeless, with lots of zips and pockets and, most sumptuous of all, is made from advanced man-made fibres, which allow it to wick sweat away from my body while also being totally waterproof. Have you ever felt your own sweat being wicked away from your body during a drizzly morning foot commute? Believe me, it’s not something you forget in a hurry.

You can snigger if you like. Perhaps you are ‘fashionable’. Perhaps you are ‘cool’. I used to aspire to those things, too. But lately I’ve come to realise there is nothing more luxurious than buying things for their sheer utility. For their practicality. I spent the best part of two decades wearing jackets that looked all right but didn’t keep me dry — or which weren’t wipe-clean, or which didn’t wick my sweat away. But realising that, no, it doesn’t have to be like this, has improved my life immeasurably.

Plus you can accessorise! Last weekend, on a whim, I bought myself a vacuum flask, the upshot of which is that I can now carry a whole litre of hot, sweet, milky tea in my backpack and have a little of cup of it whenever I feel like it. That, to me, is luxury… a whole world of comfort and practicality within reach of anybody willing to let go of their fashion credibility. I’m already putting serious thought into my winter base-layer — thermal tops, long johns, the lot — and honest to God, I’m only half-ironically toying with the idea of using walking poles on my walk into work and wearing a head torch in bed. Am I, increasingly, dressing like a Scout leader? Yes. Have I ever been happier? Honestly? No.