A Letter From Vivian: The Amanda
A letter from the founder
Somebody who has not seen you in thirty years still knows what colours you like. You are the one who forgot.
On the six things that made me choose the Amanda, how it compares to the one you reach for now, and why it is $59.95 for our twentieth year.
I am Vivian, and I opened this boutique twenty years ago with one idea: that a woman should not have to choose between comfortable and beautiful.
The sentence I hear most often in this store is I am not really a colour person.
It is almost never true. It is a thing a woman says about herself now. Ask her instead what she wore at twenty-five and you get a completely different answer, delivered faster, and usually with something in her face that was not there a moment before.
Go and look in the drawer where the warm things are kept. Grey, beige, navy. Nobody chose that. It arrived one purchase at a time across about twenty-five years — a job that wanted neutral, a decade of being practical, a slow unspoken sense that bright belongs to somebody younger — and at no point did anyone sit down and decide it.
And here is the part I find remarkable. While all that was happening, the taste did not move an inch.
A woman who knew you at twenty-eight and has not laid eyes on you since could still tell a shop assistant your colours. She would get them right. You are the only person in this story who lost track of them.
I never accepted that a woman had to choose.
The Amanda is my answer. There were six things I would not do without.
Every line of it is stitched, not printed on
This is the first thing I check and the thing most often faked. A great many cheerful sweatshirts are a flat photograph of a quilt printed onto fleece, and you know within a second of touching one. Here the sun is worked in concentric rings that stand up off the surface, and the rays beneath it are dozens of genuinely different fabrics — spots, florals, batiks, a black one covered in tiny white dots — pieced side by side and then quilted through. That is also where the warmth comes from, because quilting holds air, which is how a thing can be warm without being thick.
“That sunburst pattern makes me smile. A nice change from the plain gray sweatshirts I've collected over the years.”
Janet M., RoanokeA quilt is allowed to be joyful
This is the argument that decided it for me. There is a difference between a bright garment and a novelty one, and it is not loudness — the Amanda is very loud indeed. It is vocabulary. A quilt is a grown woman's object. It belongs to a tradition of women making something beautiful out of what was to hand, and nobody has ever called a quilt young. So this reads as a quilt rather than as a costume, which means it can be as joyful as it likes and nobody is going to ask you to account for it. That is the permission I am actually selling here, and I would rather say so plainly.
“Wore my Amanda to meet an old coworker for breakfast. She noticed it right away and said it looked like something I'd have worn back when we first met. She meant the colors! Apparently my taste hasn't changed much. It was comfortable enough that I kept it on for the rest of the day.”
Wendy S., MadisonTake your usual size — the room is already in it
I want to be precise about this, because relaxed and oversized are words that make a woman order a size up just in case, and then the shoulders are wrong and the whole thing hangs off her. The room here is built into the pattern, not borrowed from the next size. It falls from the shoulder instead of sitting on the body, so it is easy across the middle without being larger than you. Order what you normally order.
“I ordered my usual size and it has the loose fit I wanted. Comfortable around my middle without needing to size up. Been wearing it with jeans most days.”
Peggy D., IndianapolisSleeves that go the whole way to the wrist
I will not stock a warm layer with a three-quarter sleeve, and I have turned several away over the years for exactly that. The forearm is the first place a woman feels the cold and very often the last place she wants to be looked at, and a sleeve that stops short fails on both counts at once. These run the whole way down and gather at the cuff, so they stay where you push them when you are washing a dish and come back down when you are done.
“The sleeves come down to my wrists, and the fabric feels lovely and soft. Very cozy.”
Sue K., LancasterA hood with a drawstring, for the twenty minutes outside
The use for a hood is not the storm. You do not go out in a storm in a quilted hoodie. The use is the first coffee of the morning taken outside because the light is good, and the twenty minutes at the end of an afternoon when the air turns and you would otherwise have to go in. It is shaped rather than left as a flat panel, and the cords are cut from the same patterned cloth rather than bought white by the yard — which costs more, and which is exactly the sort of small thing that tells you what else was not skipped.
“I wanted something casual for chilly mornings at our camper. This has been nice to pull on before breakfast, especially with the hood up while we're sitting outside. Plenty of room to move around, too. My husband now calls it my camping uniform.”
Colleen B., BendNine sizes, a cool wash, and no occasion required
It runs XS, S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL and 5XL — nine sizes, every one of them the same price. It goes in the machine on a cool wash, so it is not a thing to be careful with. And that matters more than it sounds, because a garment you have to be careful with becomes a garment you save, and a garment you save is a garment that hangs there while you wear something you are tired of. This one was made to be used up on ordinary days. There is no occasion coming that deserves it more than a Tuesday does.
“I usually save my nicer-looking clothes for going somewhere, then spend the week in things I'm tired of. Bought this just to enjoy wearing it. The patchwork print is cheerful, and the relaxed shape suits me. No special occasion needed.”
Lois H., Grand Rapids“Pretty with dark jeans and easy to wear. I also appreciate being able to machine wash it at home.”
Patty R., KnoxvilleThe Amanda, against the one you reach for now
| The usual warm layer | The Amanda | |
|---|---|---|
| In the drawer | Grey, beige, navy, one purchase at a time | The colours you actually liked all along |
| Warmth | Flat fleece, warm because it is thick | Stitched quilting that holds air |
| The fit | Size up and hope | Your usual size, with the room built in |
| Sleeves | Three-quarter, or loose at the wrist | Full length, gathered at the cuff |
| When it gets worn | Saved for going somewhere | Tuesday |
| Sizing | Stops at XL, if you are lucky | XS through 5XL, one price |
I refuse to accept that a woman's own taste is something she is supposed to grow out of. That is the whole reason the Amanda is in the store.
Why we’re clearing it now
The Amanda hangs at $299.95 on the rail. Piecing that many separate fabrics and then quilting the whole garment through takes as long as it takes, and there is no clever way round it — that is what the number is paying for. I am not going to stand here and pretend otherwise. But the store turns twenty this year, and my daughter Pearl is beside me at the counter most days now, which is not something I let myself count on in 2006. We wanted to mark it by handing something back to the women who kept our door open, so the Amanda is going out at a fifth of that.
I will give you the honest reasoning too. A woman who buys one cheerful thing after fifteen years of grey does not stop at one. She comes back in March for the next one. That is the bet, and at $59.95 I am glad to make it.
★★★★★4.8 out of 5 — from 3,524+ reviews
$299.95$59.95
20th Anniversary Sale — Save 80%
- A sun quilted in rings, with rays pieced from dozens of different fabrics
- Stitched rather than printed — you can run a thumb across it
- Warm because the quilting holds air, not because it is thick
- A shaped hood, with drawcords cut from the same cloth
- Long sleeves, the whole way to the wrist, gathered at the cuff
- Cut relaxed, with the room built in — take your usual size
- Machine washable at a low temperature
- XS, S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL · every size the same price
- Free UPS shipping · 30-day money-back guarantee
Every size the same price · while sizes last
Twenty years behind this counter, and here is the thing I have stopped being surprised by.
A woman puts this on, and within about four seconds somebody who has known her a long time says: that is so you.
Not that it is nice. Not that it suits her. That it is so her — which is a strange thing to say about a garment she has owned for ten minutes, unless it was true about her the whole time and her clothes had simply stopped mentioning it.
Go find your size.
— Vivian · Vivian & Pearl Newport
SEE THE AMANDA — $59.95 →This is a personal letter from the founder of Vivian & Pearl Newport. Customer reviews are quoted as written. · US family brand since 2006 · Free UPS shipping · 30-day money-back guarantee.