We were having a delightful dinner the other night when Phil looked across the table and asked. "How long have you had that jacket?"
Living in Detroit, I'm usually cold and I am allergic to wool and hate jackets that are stiff, so if I can find a soft, broken-in jacket, I hold on to it.
It is just too easy to throw it on--more like I'd throw on a blanket or bathrobe than an item of clothes. I rarely (okay, not too often) wear (wore) it outside the house.
I've had the jacket since the mid-nineties, which wouldn't be so bad if I wore it occasionally or if it still looked pristine or if it was flattering. But it falls into the area of comfort clothes.
Do you have an item in your closet that is this long in the tooth or am I the only one?
24 comments:
For clothes I actually wear, I think I have a few things that are at least 10 years old, and I have a couple of jackets that I purchased in either the late eighties or early nineties (I took the shoulder pads out long ago--and still wear the jackets regularly).
I have a pink sweater with bands of green and white striping at the collar and cuffs. There is a picture of me as a wee slip of a thing in 1968 wearing that sweater. Of course, it doesn't fit me anymore, but the fact that it has made it through the past 40-plus years makes me reluctant to part with it.
After a while it's vintage and you have to keep it.
As for clothes I wear regularly, I have a pair of shorts and a pair of sweatpants that have to be sixteen or seventeen years old.
The oldest thing in my closet is my army field jacket, which was given to me in January of 1980. I wore it to shovel snow until a couple of years ago, when I became too big for it. Now it qualifies as an heirloom and isn't going anywhere.
Funny you should mention that...in 1972 Jackie bought a "Scottish jacket" (plaid, with a zipper) in Edinburgh on our first big trip to Europe. Even though it hasn't quite fit in years she still has it in the closet, waiting for the day it does.
As previously mentioned, I still have the Aran knit sweater I bought in Ireland in 1981. I do tend to keep things until they fall apart anyway, though the sweater is still in fine shape.
So no, you're not the only one.
Jeff M.
My cousin.
(Thirty years in the closet and you come out wearing that?!)
I hope he is in an urn, Fred. HA!
I am holding onto some of my mother's clothes, in the hopes they will fit me. She was a tall thin woman and I doubt it but I live in that hope. Heirloom, good word.
I have a pair of boots that must be 18+ years old or so -- I know I got them before my obnoxious mutant offspring was born. I still wear them quite regularly.
I have a belt that has been in my closet for over thirty years which I still wear, but with a couple of holes less.
Less holes is good.
I know I have shoes over 20 years old but I don't wear them. But they seem to good to throw away.
I HAD quite a lot of clothes that were too small - I'd grown too large - but before the move here we gave all the non-current clothes to Goodwill. I did keep out a couple of T-shirts I particularly like, for the day I drop some of this weight. As far as what I wear, I tend to wear clothes until they are practically rags, frayed at the cuff and collar, etc. which drives my wife crazy, but if it still works, why get rid of it and spend money on something that does the same thing?
That reasoning is also why I had an analog televisions set, even a cassette player, a Sony Walkman 1, the first model. It still works just fine, or would, if I found a cassette to put in it. There are a few in a box around here someplace.
I actually have a pair of low top Chuck Taylors that I've owned since I was about fifteen(I'm sixty-one now). Up until a few years ago, I still wore them occasionally. These days only needing one and special made at that, they just remain stored away.
We regularly donate old and unwanted clothes. I'm not attached to clothes the way I am to books.
I also keep hundreds of photographs in shoeboxes in my bedroom closet. Now those are some OLD photos.
The oldest article of clothing I own is an athletic shirt with my alma mater's name on it. Dates from the early 1980s. It can't possibly fit me anymore and I haven't tried it on since I graduated. But I hang onto it purely for idiotic sentimental reasons. My college years were really four of the best years of my life.
(Word verification for this was "balls." As in moth balls, right? Very appropriate)
Everyone should have some things they hold on to.
I have my thirty-year-old bridal dress there. Not that I plan to use it again, but I can´t sell it either as I am so small.
Apart from that I don´t really know. Our cupboards in the vicarage are so deep that no one knows what hides in there behind the piles that we use nowadays. Plenty of old rags I´m never going to wear again, probably. But you never know so why throw anything out? ;)
I have a vintage, 1930s evening dress-coat that I used to wear in my mid-20s. It had wide, notched lapels, rhinestone buttons and was beautifully fitted. I have so many memories of wearing it to clubs and exciting places, I'll never throw it out.
Those are whole other issues. My jacket had nothing to recommend it beside comfort.
I've got a few old blood drive t-shirts that I've worn so much they are practically see through, but they are Sooooooo soft and comfy. I wear them around the home.
A jacket for fifteen years. A Winter jacket and the warmest, coolest looking. Can't imagine January without it.
At fifteen years, it's just broken in.
Tee shirts are in their own category. They are keepsakes as much as clothes.
My brother-in-law.
Seriously, I have a pair of pants from my hippie days, 1970, that I wish I could fit into again.
I am wearing Vans "sneakers" that I have owned since 1998, and which are beginning to seriously fall apart; likewise my snorkel parka from 1983 (a bit too warm for the day, but I won't leave here till well into the evening, and it might dip into the 40s). The socks, pants and shirt (and reading glasses) I'm wearing are all less than a year old.
The oldest magazines I have probably date from the 1850s. I might have a book or so of that vintage, as well.
Actually, Patti, you Don't hope Fred's cousin is in an urn, even if he is closeted...no one said chained in or otherwise imprisoned, though one Can enjoy That sort of thing, too.
A waitstaff shirt from Disney's Polynesian Resort. I've had it since my early twenties. My mother's cousin was a sous chef at a restaurant there. He knew what a Disneyphile I was/am so he got me one.
Now that's vintage or at least a keepsake.
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