duck-shaped pain

Most of the last day has been spent sorting through all of my fall and winter clothes, seeing which clothes still fit and which clothes I would still leave the house wearing. Those on the losing end, I've been sorting into two piles: those which can go to the consignment store and those which can go directly to the Salvation Army.

Since I buy most of my clothes secondhand anyway, it's not a big deal to take these clothes back to where I got them in the first place. It's the textile version of the cycle of life. On the other hand, some people I know are reduced to tears at the prospect of giving clothes away -- whether this is caused by thinking about the money spent on these clothes or by a strong, almost feral attachment to certain items of clothing, I don't know. Anyway, it's not a really big deal for me.

I usually decide to go through my clothes about once a year, at times when the year's accumulation of clothing is piled up so high that I can't stand it, or when the passing of seasons spurs me into doing something different with my life -- the clothes, often being the most obvious problem, come first. This year, I'm going through ALL of them, though -- every item of clothing I own, not just the ones piled on the floor within reach of the bed. Being back in the house I grew up in means that there's all sorts of secret clothing stashes located in closets, corners, and the parts of the garage not occupied by little bags of rocks. [1]

A closer look at these piles reveals many strata of clothing, each representing a different period in my life to date.

There's the vintage clothing layer. I have a lot of it, most of which no longer fits, some of which never did (in both the much too small or much too large sense). I've always been a big sucker for vintage dresses, especially those of the 40s and 50s, and any example that I've found that was cheap enough I bought, whether it looked good on me or not. I always assumed I could sell the ones that didn't fit, and I was always wrong.

Wearing these vintage dresses was another matter -- some easily made their way into my everyday wardrobe, some didn't, as they were designed with impossibly tiny waists, meant for women who wore girdles everyday -- not something I was willing to do, even for that fun "retro" feeling.

My two current favorites are a black shirtwaist dress and a long green rayon dress that came with its own rhinestone brooch sewn on. Both came from thrift stores. My friend H., another vintage clothing enthusiast, was surprised when I found the black shirtwaist because she had been looking diligently for one for years, whereas I hadn't, and just waltzed in to some random thrift store and just found it there.

Then, there's the layer of expensive clothing. At one time in my life, I had much better credit cards and used them to obtain clothing I couldn't even conceive of buying now. To give you an example, I once bought a jacket that cost $750, thanks to the power of newly-established credit. I still have it, and thankfully, I still like it, but it's a little tight in the armholes right now.

All this expensive clothing meant that I had to wear it somewhere, and I spent two precious, now-lost years of my early twenties dressing up all the time. I don't know why, exactly, I just did -- I looked like a 40-year-old socialite every day, and was completely clueless as to why no one was hitting on me but 50-year-old men. Heels and pearls tended to turn off the cute dishevelled music geek boys down at the college radio station, much to my chagrin.

Finally, I the credit carda ran out, and I started dressing much as I do today, with a mix of interesting thrift store clothes and the occasional new piece, usually bought at Target or some place like that. Clothes from this era only get given away if they don't fit or conform to the way that I think I should look in clothes.

Still, there are some questions? What do I do with all these band t-shirts? How did I get so many? I only really wear two of them with any sort of regularity -- my Confusion is Sex shirt, bought as a present to myself after I got my job at the Denver Post [2] and the bright blue Yo La Tengo shirt which was passed down from Denver hipster to Denver hipster until it finally reached me. All the rest, I don't know what to do with. I cringe to give them to thrift stores because no one in these parts would buy them and because I basically believe that they deserve a better home than that. I was lying, I guess, when I said I wasn't that attached to any of my clothes.

[1] One of the defining characteristics of being in the same house as a geologist is that there are rocks everywhere -- on the porch, on various ledges and mantels, and especially in the garage. Our garage is full of dusty, long-untouched boxes full of little white sample bags, each filled with once-important rock samples. They're all cryptically labelled, in the hopes that whoever's looking for "82 CORE Ss. Sh. 1100-1105" will be able to find it, someday.