October 1985 - my mother took me shopping for clothes, letting me choose every item she bought: blue-marl fingerless gloves, a slim silver paisley tie, a pair of scratch-like-hell tweed trousers that were narrower than I wanted, and this shirt. Workshirts, paisley, narrow ties, and tweed: behold, the endless cycle of fashion.
God, I loved this shirt; it just felt right. The synthetic satin lining (which to my young eyes only made it more sophisticated), the almost-tonic fabric, and the long tail all made me feel perfectly in-step with that time in the world.
Then, at some forgotten point, its magic faded; stuffed in a bag, in a trunk, in the loft - the corpse of a shirt.
But I can still almost glimpse how that shirt made me feel. And when I look at it now, I keep coming back to a tale told by Cynthia Rowley:
God, I loved this shirt; it just felt right. The synthetic satin lining (which to my young eyes only made it more sophisticated), the almost-tonic fabric, and the long tail all made me feel perfectly in-step with that time in the world.
Then, at some forgotten point, its magic faded; stuffed in a bag, in a trunk, in the loft - the corpse of a shirt.
But I can still almost glimpse how that shirt made me feel. And when I look at it now, I keep coming back to a tale told by Cynthia Rowley:
“I grew up in a small town in the Midwest, and relatives back east were always sending us fabric - they thought we were pioneers or something and had to sew our own clothes. One day when I was seven, my relatives sent a material so ugly, my mother just handed it over to me and said, “Here dear, you make something out of it”
"It was brown with a giant paisley on a nice cotton sateen. I made a two-piece ensemble with a clothesline in the waist to hold it together. I saw a picture or myself in this dress recently, and when I tell you it was so ugly it’s scary, I’m not exaggerating. But I felt like a princess in that dress. I wore it every single day for a whole summer. My mother couldn’t get me to take it off.
"Now, when I see people dressed up, I just hope they feel as good as I felt in that dress. When I wore that thing, I was on fire.”
"It was brown with a giant paisley on a nice cotton sateen. I made a two-piece ensemble with a clothesline in the waist to hold it together. I saw a picture or myself in this dress recently, and when I tell you it was so ugly it’s scary, I’m not exaggerating. But I felt like a princess in that dress. I wore it every single day for a whole summer. My mother couldn’t get me to take it off.
"Now, when I see people dressed up, I just hope they feel as good as I felt in that dress. When I wore that thing, I was on fire.”
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