It was at least a decade old. Probably older. The sad truth is, I think it was a knock-off of an item of clothing worn on FRIENDS. It was big and blue, with a motif of giant coffee cups. I adored it.
It had worn bald in spots. I think it was beginning to give me a rash. Over a dozen years, subtracting an average of 65 nights per year for travel, it was probably worn 3,600 times. And washed, gee, at least twelve times.
Kidding about the last stat. Then again, that could explain the rash. That, or the bald patches.
I put it in the trash Saturday, purchased a new one. May is not the best time to buy a new bathrobe. Choices are limited. The new one is sleek and soft and stretchy, but a little short. I could never, for example, go outside and move my car to a legal space while wearing this robe.
I weeded a lot of clothing out of my life over the weekend, although probably not enough. I packed away the jeans that are currently too large because — know thyself — they will probably fit again, sooner than I’d like to think. I filled one Hefty bag with give-aways, another with things that no one else should even touch (bye, bathrobe) and a third with things that I should give away, but I can’t, for sentimental reasons.
My “Goodbye, Evening Sun” T-shirt went into the trash bag. That was hard, but it is a rag, frayed and tattered. (It had a replica of the Evening Sun’s last front page, with the wonderful headline, “But will you love us in the morning?”) I decided that no one needs 22 white T-shirts and edited those down to a reasonable amount.
My closet is a much sparer place now, filled with items, all of which fit me and 70 percent I actually wear on a regular basis. (Currently on an anti-blouse kick. Do blouses actually flatter any female figure?)
I miss my bathrobe.
Stories of mourned clothing, please, after the jump. The nastier, the better.
I was very thin — too thin — for most of my college career (well, except when I was pregnant) and had a red long-sleeved t-shirt with the logo of my college dramatic society on the front and the slogan “I can’t… I have rehearsal” on the back. I outgrew that t-shirt, but could never stand to let it go. It came with me on at least eight moves, and every time I packed it, I thought, “Why do I still have this?”
I gave it to my daughter on her 21st birthday, which coincided with her appearing in a production of The Merchant of Venice with her own college dramatic society. It fit her perfectly.
It was junior year of college and it was a two piece wildly patterned dress thingie. I loved it so much because it fit so well (plus the 70′s were so colorful!!). I decided to hand wash it in the dorm’s utiilty room sink and promptly left it soaking over the weekend. Yes, the colors bled together. Unconvinced that this couldn’t be resolved, I re-washed it several times before admitting I had just fu**ed it up and there was no one to blame other than me. I still think about the idiocy and the loss.
I always feel compelled to keep de-commisioned old gym shoes for lawn-mowing duty; can�t see pitching shoes out that can still keep your feet dry when you step into a puddle�.but in my middle age, I recently discovered that we have approximately 17 pairs of grungy old shoes (which are all greened-up) scattered around the garage in various cubbies and corners�..so most of them went into the garbage can (still pains me to think of that spectacle; although several had cracked soles, and would have failed the puddle test)
Another T-shirt story: just moved summer clothes from the basement to the bedroom, winter to the basement. Everytime I do this I look at the “keepers” I’ll never wear again (mostly because they’re too small)in the basement wardrobe. Several stand out, but none more than the 2 “Pride of Baltimore” T-shirts, one red and one blue–from the first “Pride of Baltimore,” the ship that was lost so many years ago. I can’t bear to toss them.
p.s. Laura–although I read your blog religiously, this is the first time I’ve posted. I’m a Pratt librarian.
Two items for me. One was very similar to Woodstock’s story, but the multicolored crocheted item was a wide-brimmed hat that I had crocheted as my family drove from Texas to California on vacation the summer after my freshman year in college. Fell out of my coat pocket walking to the car in Texas A&M’s remote staff lot about five years later. I still miss that hat.
The other is a T-shirt from the National Women’s COnference in 1977. That shirt was probably as close as I will ever get to the cover of Time Magazine, and it is full of holes because it actually fit long enough to get worn out, but it is still hanging in my over-crowded closet.
I was a huge fan of the band Night Ranger back in the 80′s. Much to my father’s dismay I spent most of meager paycheck (earned working at the local library!) on cassette tapes and one memorable day, a Night Ranger t-shirt at the local Camelot Music store. The shirt was huge, way too big. But I didn’t care, I slept in it for years, wore it under sweatshirts, whatever.
After ten years or so, the shirt was actually too small, and fabric around the band logo was starting to tear and rot away. I had stopped wearing the shirt a long time ago, but I finally realized that carrying a t-shirt, when I had so many others, and I couldn’t even wear it for fear that it would fall apart in the washing machine, well, it was time to say goodbye.
But there was a tug on my heart when that shirt dropped into the garbage…
I miss my black Nighthawks T. I miss the body that it fit so well on even more.
In 1998, a company named “Google” came to the Johns Hopkins Campus. They were giving away T-shirts. I took one. It faded and…I gave it away.
WHY LORD WHY?
Still have all my original Jesse Jackson campaign T-shirts, though!
And oh yeah, blouses haven’t looked good since the “Kramer vs. Kramer” era. THAT cut was universally flattering, and I have raided my mother’s closet for them many a time.
Most others are in the Liddy Dole school of pouf.
When I moved into my fiancee’s place in April, I brought all my jeans with me. One pair may have been mixed up with someone else’s because the ends are cut narror. Nita hated them until I wore them when we went out one evening.
Last Friday, I went to a comedy gig for some friends, and got pulled up on stage at the last minute to do 5 mins for another comic who got sick. I had the jeans on. When I got off, Nita said, “You look like you were wearing denim leggings. I’m throwing them out.”
Gonna miss those jeans, but they really did look stupid.
I was at Narnia( in NYC) in January- a consignment shop in(on) the Lower East Side. I was with my 22 year old niece and 20 year old daughter and always in fashion sister(I normally go to Goodwill, Salarmy and Value Village). I told the salesperson that I was sorry I could not bring her my teal suede hotpants with tiny overall straps that I had purchased in London in 1971 at the Kensington Hypermarket. Even though I was tiny then – I wonder why I bought them. I probably had them for 4 or 5 years.
Ithink that I still have a very tattered t shirt from the late 1970′s when there was talk of reinstating the draft. It has Uncle Sam on it point his finger and says, “Not me Sam” and then either “Stop the Draft” or “No Draft No War”. I’m not sure if it is in a box in the basement or if I tossed it.
T-shirts. Love them, can’t get enough of them. If I only had 22 white t-shirts, I’d feel like I didn’t have enough. My favorite was the one I wore to hand in my resignation to a boss who seemed to think I’d been faking the whole agoraphobia thing for 6+ years, despite letters from medical doctors and psychiatrists. It read, “People like you are the reason people like me need medication.” It ended up on my couch blanket that my next door neighbor made:
http://www.tshirtblanket.com/
(Also on that blanket: my exit interview t-shirt: “I hear voices and they don’t like you….” What didn’t make it on was my 15+ year old “Uppity Women Unite” t-shirt which still makes a Bouchercon appearance each year at breakfast one day)
I just found my shirt. It says “Stop the Draft, 1979″ Some things are still relevant almost 30 years later!
Beth,
I think you just made a sale for your neighbor. I’ve always fantasized about doing this.
The T shirt blanket is a marvelous idea, and I may get one too. I have A LOT more T-shirts than just 22! I try to rotate through them all on a regular basis.<p>Lamented clothing – oh yes. More than 30 years ago, when my daughter was an infant, I found multicolored crocheted cap, designed like a jockey’s cap, with a very expansive band, and a brim to shade my eyes if needed. I loved it – it could pull down over my ears for extra warmth, perch on the back of my head, shade my eyes as noted, because of the multicolor, it went with anything. My husband at the time hated it. I never understood, because I regularly got admiring complements on it – including a memorable conversation in New York’s Greenwich Village when a street denizen, VERY unsteady on his feet, stopped to admire it and kept me engrossed in his comments on life in general for several minutes. On an unseasonably warm winter’s day in Chicago, with the wind blowing fiercely, I took it off and tucked it in my coat pocket. When we got home, it was gone. I was never convinced that my husband had NOT seen it fall to the sidewalk, figured it was good riddance, and failed to retrieve it. I never saw another remotely like it in any shop, anywhere.<p>Now you’ve gone and gotten me all misty-eyed!
I have about 50 T shirts, Laura, most of them either sports related or mystery writer related. Most of them were owned and worn by my late hubby, Bob Swets, the sports maven/journalist, so those stay, no matter what. I wear them, and remember.
I also finally had to throw away a pair of jeans I bought in college, covered with paint (mostly flat black, and flat grey, with the occassional florescent stuff thrown in) from every show I’ve ever done since 1970. Yep, that old. I cried…my neighbor thought I’d lost it.
Ah, clothing. And Beth, looking forward to seeing that Uppity Women T shirt again this year! See you guys in Baltimore!
This is about finding rather than mourning an article of clothing and I’m not making it up, really.
In April, I threw out my very, very (closer to 2 decades rather than one) old pink and white striped terrycloth bathrobe. No mourning was involved: I’d never particularly liked it because I don’t do pink well but it it had been a hand me down years ago during my poor teacher-in-a-Catholic-school days when anything that I didn’t have to buy was a good thing and it was thick and warm.
I’d been wanting to throw it out (it was well into the ‘nobody should have to touch it’ stage) but finally went ahead and did it when I happened upon what I decided was its perfect replacement. At a silent auction for a local literacy non-profit I discovered a big, blue robe with large (although not giant), colorful coffee cups-the coffee cups even have steam coming off of them. I’ll send or post a picture.
Say, appropos of nothing (unless he was the designer of the dearly departed bathrobe), who is Matt Rebennack?
My internet sleuth skills are apparently weak; I googled up some unrelated fashion photography site, that lead to a genuinely odd porno site*, which made me forget what the original search was after
*”body scapes and figure studies” – not really “porno”; a Flickr photo-art thing (yeah yeah yeah – my wife didn’t buy that either)
So now, did I dream ‘Matt Rebennack’, or was the post ALWAYS titled ‘The wisdom of Mac Rebennack’??
Maybe I’m just losin’ my mind!