The archive clothes bag

Number two child is very keen on op-shopping (as we would call it) or thrifting (as the young people call it) for clothes, and knows all the best places to go around town. He and his friends also do clothes swaps, so there is a constant stream of - shall we call it eclectic? - fashion flowing through the house. Of course his 'retro' is my 'five minutes ago' or 'I still wear that' which leads to some conversations where my eyebrows are up around my hairline at what is considered cool. And bless their hearts they aren't burdened by notions of different clothing for different genders, or for different occasions. If it's good to wear it's good to wear and off they go.

So this is why I found myself darning a hole in a jumper the other day - not normally something I would ever bother doing. But it turns out this op shop find was 100% wool from Bolivia (and it looks hand-knitted and possibly hand-dyed) so I put some ancient skills to use, found some not-at-all-matching wool and mended the hole. I think the last time I darned anything was for my Brownie needlework badge, and I don't think I would have passed if they had been assessing me on the bolivian jumper. But it will stop it unravelling for this winter at least.

We were talking about paisley vests, and I mentioned the one I made and wore to death in 1990, and said "I think I still have it, in the archive clothes bags" and of course number two's ears pricked up .. the what? Where? Can I see? So I dragged the bags down, but explained that it wasn't because they were good clothes, it was because they were sentimental. And I made most of them (badly), and they were mostly loved to death ... but we had a happy half hour going through them all. 

I was "this is the dress I wore the night I met your father", "this is the skirt that my flatmate's grandmother wore in the 1960s and gave it to me and I wore it for the entirety of 1991", "this is the dress I wore to my engagement party.... the jacket I wore to graduation ... the cotton dress I lived in in 1992 ... the law school ball of 1993 .... the high commission ball of 1997" etc. Interspersed with "I looked SUPER HOT" and "I thought I was the ducks nuts in this, jesus christ, what was I thinking" and eye-rolling from the child.

Anyway, he rather liked the beige polyester pant suit I wore to several weddings in 1996 and the green velvet lined hooded jacket from several parties in 1993. Which he then wore to school ....