On buying less, wearing more, and the cape she can't resist – Sophia Roe is 'Just Browsing'

Relief, mostly. I feel out of place dressing for summer. I'm not big on summer wardrobes: I have a tank top and a pair of shorts to play with, truthfully. Autumn gives clothes a purpose again. A coat has a reason to exist, a scarf has a point, and you can start thinking in layers rather than individual pieces.

I like a very substantial coat over a delicate knit, or masculine trousers with a fine knit. Something polished with something that looks as though you forgot to finish getting dressed. I'm generally more interested in proportion than decoration.

"I don't really believe in rebuilding a wardrobe every season. It suggests either a very short memory or a very large closet.

I usually look for the piece that makes what I already own useful again. It doesn't have to be new, just something that changes how the rest of my wardrobe works. Fabric matters enormously. So does construction. You can forgive quite a lot if those two things are right.

For autumn, I'm drawn to pieces that do some of the work for you. The Lior coat is a good example. Long, strict, perhaps a little more dramatic than necessary. The cape is what gets me. You can remove it, but I'm not sure why you would. It makes whatever you're wearing underneath look put together, even when it wasn't.

The Maxi Solal is there for a different reason. I have very little patience for bags that are only for show. I want one that can come with me for the whole day. It's big, black, and serious, and the two leathers stop it from looking too polished. I imagine it will get better the more I use it, and better still once it's carrying too much.

The leather bomber is more familiar territory. I probably have enough of them already, which has never stopped me. I like them a little too big, as though they belonged to someone else first, worn over something much smaller and more fitted. It changes the balance. More jacket than necessary is rarely a problem.

I also try not to buy for an imaginary version of myself."

"I prefer stores. Clothes are physical objects, and photographs leave out too much. You need to know the weight of something, how the fabric behaves, where a shoulder actually sits.

I shop online out of necessity, but I understand clothes better in a room.

When I try something on, I'm not that interested in whether it's conventionally flattering. I want to know whether it changes the way I stand. I almost always try another size, too. The size you're supposed to wear isn't necessarily the one that gives you the best silhouette."

"I've become less interested in shopping. I have always been very specific about what I like and don't like. I've bought things I liked and kept the ones I love.

I buy much less. Repetition has become more interesting to me than novelty. There is something very elegant about wearing the same coat for 10 years and letting it acquire a history.

What hasn't changed is my attraction to contradiction. Masculine and feminine, severe and fragile, polished and slightly wrong. If everything agrees, I usually lose interest."

"Both cultures understand that good clothes have to survive ordinary life. That may be the most important similarity.

Scandinavian dressing tends to start with function. We like an argument for why something exists. French dressing allows for a little more irrationality: it has to be beautiful in itself, first and foremost.

I think the interesting part is somewhere between the two.

That is where Sézane makes sense to me. The vocabulary is clearly French, but you don't have to adopt an entire French identity to wear the pieces."

"A coat. Always a coat.

And knitwear: clothes with enough structure that I can stop thinking about them once I've put them on.

From Sézane's new collection, I like the Jule Jacket in chocolate. I'd wear it with an old white shirt and trousers, probably with nothing particularly clever happening around it. If a jacket is good, it shouldn't need more."