I bought a Burberry peacoat in 2014. It is impeccable, comfortable, looks good, and fits beautifully. It’s a lightweight coat that works in transitional weather. I bought it assuming that it would become a wardrobe workhorse. After all, it’s navy which is a core neutral for my style, a peacoat silhouette which I’m fond of, and a pristine classic with longevity. Logically, it ticked off many boxes. Yet it’s been worn infrequently in twelve years, and ended up being far from a workhorse.

Along the way I figured out that the coat has some shortcomings. Although I love wearing dark blue tops, bottoms, dresses and patterns, I am very moody about wearing dark blue outerwear. I don’t naturally gravitate to a dark coat. Some seasons I want to wear a dark coat, and some seasons I don’t. By contrast, I am always in the mood to wear cream and bright coats. More recently I love wearing toffee and tan outerwear too.

I do have a navy maxi wool coat that I enjoy wearing a lot more than my Burberry peacoat, which brings me to its second strike. I wish it was longer or shorter because outerwear lengths that hit high on my thighs are not my favourite.

Despite the Burberry’s infrequent wear, I’ve kept it, and will probably never pass it on. Somehow I’m confident that it will be worn more in future. I’m okay with its infrequent wear because potential wardrobe workhorses can be hard to predict, and you can’t get it right every time. Conversely, other items have unexpectedly become workhorses, which more than makes up for it. What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.

Over to you. Do you have an infrequently worn item that you thought would become a workhorse, but didn’t? And are you keeping it anyway?