For some reason I became obsessed with finding a raincoat for my daughter last weekend. Rain was in the forecast and she’s outgrown all her rain gear.

As I soon found out, autumn is not the season to be shopping for raincoats at the usual stores: Gap, Madewell, JCrew, Brooklyn Industries and the small boutiques in SoHo and on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.

February and March, in anticipation of the April showers that bring May flowers, is the season to shop for a raincoat. I was striking out at every shop where I asked plaintively, “Do you have any raincoats?”

Walking past a fairly generic looking fashion boutique on Broadway near Broome Street in Soho I did see a cute purple trench coat in window. I photographed it with my iPhone and emailed it to OSFO.

“No,” was her swift reply. But I liked it enough (in black) to think that if she saw it in person…(Oh how we mothers deceive ourselves).

“Can I return this? My daughter has very specific tastes and she doesn’t usually like what I pick out,” I told the shop girl.

“You can return it within 30 days for store credit with a receipt,” was her swift reply. I asked her to try the raincoat on because she was tiny like OSFO. It looked really great and her and I was convinced OSFO would love it when she saw it.

Nope.

The next day I went back to the fairly generic fashion boutique in SoHo and knew I would have to find a way to use that store credit and I wasn’t about to buy OSFO another raincoat. As luck would have it they had a tan English style trench coat that fit me to a T.

Reader, I bought it.

Since the store doesn’t give out cash credit I had to spend additional money because there was a $5 difference between the black trench coat and the tan one, I bought a black t-shirt.Okay so I had a raincoat. But no raincoat for OSFO.

I decided to go into Muji, a general store for Japanese minimalists (on Broadway near Grand Street) which is filled with simple and well designed housewares, stationery items, clothing and furniture in white, black and beige and sometimes brown.

They had RAINCOATS. For $12.95 they sell the world’s simplest and most well designed portable raincoat in a wallet-sized bag. FYI: this raincoat is so well designed they sell it at the Museum of Modern Art design store.

It comes with a hood and has snaps!

Need I say more? I bought two. One for me and one for OSFO, who didn’t like it much but it will be a godsend when it’s raining. Hepcat could even wear the larger one I got for myself.

Mission accomplished. Three raincoats. Yay Muji.