I spent years buying gloves a size too big because I liked the idea of cramming my hand in fast on a cold morning, and all it ever got me was a pair that felt like oven mitts by February, stretched at the fingers and useless for doing up a coat button. Gloves are one of those things you think don’t matter until your hands are raw at a bus stop in January and you realise the ones you bought look lovely in a photo and do absolutely nothing else.
A good pair starts with the fit, snug through the palm, not pulled tight, with enough room at the fingertips that you’re not fighting the seams every time you make a fist. Leather, if you can run to it, softens and moulds to your hand over a winter or two, the way a good handbag strap does, and a thin cashmere or wool lining underneath will keep you warmer than a thick glove with nothing inside it. Check the stitching at the base of the thumb first, that’s where cheap gloves give up, and have a look at the cuff, a bit of length that tucks under a coat sleeve properly is worth more than any amount of decoration on the back of the hand. If you’re only buying one pair, go leather, go a touch big in the length rather than the width, and get one with a seam down the back of the fingers rather than across the knuckle, it lasts longer and looks better doing it.
Gloves work hardest with a coat that has a proper cuff, something structured enough that the glove tucks in rather than fighting for space. A bright pair against a plain wool coat does something lovely, the kind of thing you notice on a dull grey morning and feel oddly cheered by. They fight with anything already busy at the wrist, a chunky knit cuff or a fussy coat sleeve, because then you’ve got two things competing for the same six inches of arm and neither one wins.
Where they fall down is anything needing real dexterity, keys, phones, car doors, unless you’ve paid for the conductive fingertip kind, and most of the cheaper leather ones crack at the knuckle within a winter if you don’t feed them with a bit of cream now and then. Buy for your hands, not for the photograph, and you’ll actually wear them past January.