thread & fabric

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months," said Oscar Wilde

...who was a snob
...who I love
...who is now dead
...who also wrote:

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

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Photo by Richard Mahar

Most of my body's life has been spent in thrift store clothes. It probably started as a cost thing, right? With 6 kids growing all ways at once, what would you do? You'd go to Value Village and Goodwill on 50% off sale days and buy cheap clothes, that's what you'd do, and you'd buy shoes that are at least two sizes bigger than a given kid's current foot because you know next week those feet are going to put a ruler off its meds with a violent growth spurt.

Oh the days of too big shoes. For me, a tall girl from a young age and the matching feet to balance all that height on top of, shoe sizes have always been galling. Now, at 23, I have so much more perspective. I know my feet are average if not even a little smallish for my height. At the time though, I hated my feet and wearing too-big shoes didn't help my pride. In the long run, it was probably good for my character.

When you're a kid, thrift store clothes always work. How can they not fit? You're basically a glorified oval. No weird kinks and corners. Just slap a t-shirt on and make sure you've got a diaper or undies and everything's good. I spent most of my time in the mud and up trees anyway, my hair unbrushed, my face unwashed. Savagery at its finest. Who cared about fashion? Wearing clothes was just a way to keep from shaming the family name.

Thrift stores continued to work until I was about 14 or 15 and then I hit the Self Conscious Years. My torso outpaced my shirts. "How much spine does one person need?" I wondered. I felt like I had enough to make another person plus a small animal, maybe a 'possum.

I started re-sewing cheapster thrift store clothes to get a more perfect fit. I'd buy 99 cent over sized shirts and turn them into long, fitted shirts. I'd hem pants, resew inseams, do all sorts of diddly to skirts, slash things in half, turn scarves into leggings, dresses into shirts. All my clothes with the exception of...um...undergarments and socks...were re-creations based from salvaged clothing or fabric.

The problem I was addressing: Things didn't fit as simply and easily as they used to. I hate ill fitting clothes. My teenage years were already uncomfortable enough (F.Scott Fitzgerald said: Everyone's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness), why put uncomfortable clothes on top? Still, I wore a lot of terrifying things.

But it was cheap and fun and I got mostly what I wanted in the end without all that bother of actually needing to look for the desired item.

Then I went to college and I realized I could turn it into a sort of hyper moral tenet: Look, I'm reusing stuff we just cast off for no reason. I'm being wise and sane in a gorged society.

I wore the same clothes for years, cutting them up and altering them whenever fashions shifted dramatically or my sense of comfort changed. One long dress I got when I was 14 turned into a long skirt, turned into a short dress, turned into a medium length skirt and then became a thin-strapped tank top. Now it's a halter-strap tank top and is still in my closet.

Yeah, so all of that's done now.

Sewing still happens, but I'm tired of cheap stuff held together with my crooked seams, cobbled together so it looks right on the outside. If you flip my clothes inside out, you'll see a crazy patchwork of corrections over corrections. Also, I'm facing the problem of fit again. Things really don't fit now. I don't know what happened when I turned 20, but I have something resembling curves for the first time in my life. Child-bearing hips? Maybe. They're foreign to me. I have to adjust.

So the point of all this: I bought new clothes and I spent REAL money on them and I don't know what to think. I had a friend who knows what she's doing take me shopping last time I visited Portland and I ventured out by myself today. Sad as it is, I have more of an image to keep up now, being a working professional. Not much of an image, granted, but I want to look competent and my old clothes are falling apart. The back of my pant hems are ragged from years of walking in the elements. Shirts that kept me through junior high to college graduation are threadbare and unfortunate. It's time to move on.

My hope is that buying this new clothing will not only keep me in clothes for the next seven years, but it will make the whole "What do I wear?" question easier. It was getting to the point of asking every morning, "What can I wear that doesn't have holes? Oh shoot, well check this off the list. Where did that hole come from? When and why? Dear lord!" or "What, of these holey ragged clothes, can I combine in such a way that the overlapping fabrics will conceal the general decrepit state?"

It was complicated and I don't like spending that much time just figuring out what to wear. Silly. I need to be able to get ready in five minutes and not be hung up by what's on my hangers.

So now I have what I need: a new pair of jeans, a pair of slacks for when I'm in court, some nice shirts, a serviceable/comfortable/adorably-appointed gray and black skirt.

Exciting, yes?

Also, I have the tights pictured above (left), but those are just sheer frivolity. Yay frivolity.

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In other news, I think this story gave me an ulcer. Court stories always do.

I'm looking forward to Monday. Why? Oh well, I was just out, you know, drinking whiskey sours with a co-worker and we were walking back home when she spotted some police lights flashing outside a bar. Interesting. We continued walking forward, round the corner, come to be all of the officers on duty from all the agencies in town are outside this bar. About six cars with screaming lights. Whaaaaaat?

A brawl! Hoorah! People in custody are kicking at the doors inside the back of a squad car. Witnesses and sideline brawl participants are hugging the sidewalks wailing in drunken abandonment, all of them completely confused. Cops are standing around, arms folded across their chests or hands resting on top of their radios. Dark night, neon light. The bar is emptied and closed.

I snapped into reporter mode, caught the eye of a deputy who knows me and started demanding things.

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When I'm typing up the police dispatches in the morning, I listen to this song:

The sheriff pulled me in and he sat me down
He said, you make no mistake
I know just what it takes
To pull a man's soul back from heaven's gates


Here it is: "Black River Killer" by Blitzen Trapper