Staying in the Closet

Stuff is stuff.

Every time I walk through a thrift store I am reminded of how quickly things go from must-haves to must-nots. This is especially true of clothes. You’ll find racks of discarded shoes, handbags worn but not worn out, and dresses guilty only of the crime of outlasting their peak of stylishness.

Most clothes are worn for a bit before being tossed like used tissues.

And they have as much sentimental value.

But then there are the things we hold onto; the skirt that no longer fits but still hangs in the back of the closet; the jackets with shoulder pads so wide you have to run sideways to get through a door; torturous, toe-pinching, heels you just can’t seem to bring yourself to permanently ditch.

Occasionally, I’ll hold onto an item beyond reason simply because I remember how much I paid for it. Maybe I don’t want to admit I made a terrible mistake. Or maybe I optimistically hold onto hope the purchase will make sense sometime in the future.

But unlike money in the bank, clothes in the closet rarely enjoy an increase in interest rates.

After being feeling sufficiently haunted by these ghosts of fashion pasts, I usually see the light. I change my ways. I change my clothes. And I set them free, releasing them into the wild in hope they will find their way to a good home with someone else.

But there are a few items I will treasure forever.

Consider the vest pictured above.

Most people would view it as junk. And I’d be hard pressed to argue otherwise. It’s boxy. The tailoring is rough. The black cotton fabric is worn and frayed. The burgundy and green velvet appliqué decorating the front and back and the gold tone embroidery have come undone in places.

A boy gave me that vest.

I don’t remember his name. I can’t even recall if he was English or Australian, only that he wasn’t American. It’s a blur. The year was 1974. I’d traveled overland from Italy through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India. That’s where I met the boy. I was eighteen years old. He wasn’t much older. There were no sparks between us. We were just two kids on separate adventures in a fascinating land we couldn’t begin to understand.

He was wearing the vest.

I’d seen mostly old men wearing similar vests over long tunics in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The traditional style was already giving way to button-front dress shirts favored by some of the younger generation. But to me, the vests had a dreamy appeal, like something out of an illustrated fairytale. The more elaborate ones were embellished with bits of colored glass and mirror held in place with embroidery thread. They sparkled in the dust-colored surroundings.

I told the boy how much I admired his vest. Someone gave the vest to him, he said, and he would give it to me.

And just like that, he removed the vest and handed it to me.

I objected. He insisted.

I wore the vest a few months later when I headed north to Nepal. I trekked the Himalayas in that vest. When I was lucky enough to land a job, along with four new friends, in a region then otherwise closed off to foreigners, I paired the vest with long dresses. I packed it up in a metal trunk to bring to England where I lived another year. When I returned to the USA, more than three years after I’d left my parents’ home as a teenager, I had the vest.

I will probably never wear it again. I doubt my daughters have any interest in inheriting a shabby vest that looks as if it came from a hippie festival booth.

But I know that I can ever get rid of it.

What items have you carried with you beyond reason, and why?