What a Pretty Mess

Old uniforms, old shirts, old gowns and costumes.. A catalogue of childhood fashion faux pas. What to do with them?

I like to just keep them. It’s fun to open suitcases full of old clothes.. they all remind me a bit of something in the past. One of my dreams was to show my future children their mommy’s baby clothes. “Oh look.. I used to be smaller than you are now, see my pullover it doesn’t even fit you any more.”

I keep the littlest things in memory boxes, why not clothes. I’m not someone who’d voluntarily give them away. My mom usually does that for me.. sometimes without me knowing. =( I guess I should have expected as much from someone who dumped all her furry winter coats by a dumpster in Holland including one she just recently bought for the reason that ‘the homeless might need them.’ As I recall, the ‘homeless’ always had enough layers of clothing on to last years. I imagine they peel a layer every time it gets a bit warmer, keep them somewhere, then put them back on again, layer by layer as it gets colder. I bet you can tell how much clothes they have on by the smell.

Anyway, my sister needed to redesign some plain white shirts last week and I helped her. What a pretty mess. It’s when I took this photo. We got out all the old clothes to find some nice fabric. I was difficult deciding which clothes to cut up. We even got out a roll of this untouched gold fabric from who knows where so we won’t have to snip up any of the clothes. In the end, we decided on dad’s old Marks & Spencer shirt. With his permission, of course.