Dear Lorraine,

First of all, I have to apologise to not write English fluently. So I hope you will be tolerant of the mistakes or inappropriancies in my letter. But your site is such a marvel that I can't resist it.

Born in April 1957, I grew up in the sixties where all sorts of magnificent raincoats use to be very popular. Being a little kid, I use to be deeply moved by these plastic raincapes and rubber capes that a lot of girls were wearing at school.

Black shiny oilskins use to be popular too amongst the adults. 1968 had been a revolution in France and those black shiny oilskins were everywhere. From 1969 on, the girls in my college didn't stop wearing them. The colours changed as well as the shape but always they wore those beautiful shiny oilskins - either rubber or vinyl.

In 1969/1970, the fashion was: maxi shiny black ones. My sister had one, and half of the girls at my college had one. I was thrilled and very excited all the time with those. Some boys were wearing them as well!

And of course I was dreaming I could have one.

It was a fantastic accident that my parents had a clothes shop. One day, my mother said, your brother will have one of these shiny maxi raincoats. Would I like one too?

And I felt so bad, so ashamed of myself like if I was discovered, that I stupidly said 'No!' - all red and embarrassed.

And unusually, my mother, who would always ignore those sorts of answers, said : 'All right, you can have another one, an ordinary one.'

I felt very bad and very sad and went to my bed-room and cried and cried.

The only time my mother didn't insist on telling me what to wear was when she allowed me not to wear what I loved the most! I had to go to school with an unprepossessing cotton raincoat which I hated each time - because each time I was thinking of the beautiful opportunity I had missed.

So during the nights, I used to wake and get up very silently and creep down to the shop store. And there I would try on all the lovely vinyl raincoats I could find.

My heart was for sure beating strongly and my emotions were huge. Even writing this nowadays brings back to me these beautiful memories. Every night I went down to try on those raincoats. And they were making noises, those beautiful crackling noises, when I was trying them on. I was always afraid of being discovered! - but nothing in the world would have stopped me.

Over the next few years, the macs became shorter and a lot of colours came in - red, green, yellow, blue - as well as fantastic fashion designs.

I used to make a daily bus journey then with a girl who wore one of those beautiful raincoats. Every day I sat next to her on the bus during all those months and always she wore one of those beautiful raincoats.

When I became 15, I discovered that my love of raincoats had became attached to my love of girls.

Cire Noir

Thanks very much indeed for this. You speak very eloquently for many of us I think - except that not everyone has railfulls of mackintoshes to try on every night! What incredible good fortune! - or did it work the other way round, with your parents' business somehow inspiring you with impermeaphilia?

- Lorraine