Monday , November 16, 2009
A Day In the Life: Clothes That Make Us So Sentimental
ARMY PARKA OF DARKNESS
Not to brag (but yeah, to totally love up the things I have), I'm really happy with my wardrobe. I have just the perfect amount of stuff and everything is pared down enough so that I can honestly say that I love, adore and wear everything in my closet. The nice thing about getting older as a lady who loves clothes is that you finally collect enough awesome shit that you finally understand why "investment" dressing works. But true to my punk/zinegirl/alternateen roots, my most beloved garment is not a Balenciaga dress (although I love that) or a Maison Martin Margiela sweater (although I wear it all the time), but a humble army green parka that I impulsively picked up from H&M about three or four years ago and still wear to death. It's part of a long tradition of army-type parkas throughout my life. The very first army parka I wore was my dad's own Thai army one that I filched from him when I was 15, and I wore it everywhere till it fell apart. It made me feel rebellious and tough and ready to take on the armies of suburban darkness. The next one I snagged from a boyfriend in college; I have to say that it fell apart long before the relationship did. (I kind of wish the reverse had been true...that parka was awesome, the relationship--not so much.) I had another one when I first lived in NYC and wore it when working on film sets, only to have it lost somewhere in upstate New York on the set of a crazy thriller shot for Italian television. Then it was a wilderness of parka-less years, during which I kind of became an "educated" "fashionista" and got picky about materials, silhouette, cuts and all that fun stuff. Such was my transformation that I had a hard time finding a garment that combined both the swagger and self-sufficiency of army parka-ness with a type of fit more akin to the Chanel-like narrowness that I love. And then, one day during my first year at film school, I impulsively tried on my current parka at the H&M in Harlem. Love at first sight! Magic! Yay! It's almost like a perfect bridge between my earlier and present fashion selves: it has the practicality and authenticity of the punk rock parka but with a sophisticated fit and structure. I am always so happy when it gets cold outside, because it means I can wear it all the time again. I've taken it with me to Lisbon and London (it couldn't go with me to Thailand 'cause it's too bloody hot, and to Iceland 'cause it's too bloody wet.) I'm hoping it'll come with me when I hit Berlin hopefully in February. It's just my favorite thing ever, and I hope it stays with me for a long, long time. Army parka, I love you so much! (Kat)
(Yes, it's a rare picture of Kat, wearing her jacket)
THE SKATE SHOP SHIRT FROM FROG AND TOAD NIGHT
(L: me and my shirt. R: Frog and Toad.)
So this is my "Foundation Super Co." shirt; it lives in my Bag Of Emotional T-Shirts in the back of my closet, along with two Tom Petty tees my parents bought me when they went to see Tom Petty, a handmade wifebeater Mary Timony sold me half-price because she's a sweetheart, my Lemonheads t-shirt and some other stuff I can't remember. I bought it at a skate shop on Thayer Street in Providence on a Friday night when I was seventeen: I'd been in college about a month or two and took the bus up to the big city with the girl who'd become my first university BFF after we discovered we both liked doing stuff like watching Mary Poppins drunk and making our stuffed animals talk in British accents. We went to the skate shop, and I bought my shirt, and we went to a store that sold whimsical clocks and strange bubble baths. We ate dinner at a fast food Indian restaurant called Curry In A Hurry, and maybe after that we ate pie or cake and coffee in a cafe on the corner. We read Frog And Toad Are Friends to each other in the Brown bookstore and record-shopped in two different record stores. And then we took the bus back to school and probably did something like really adorable like color in our Hello Kitty coloring books and listen to Tori Amos and talk about the many different boys we liked.
That night's one of my five favorite frosh memories, maybe it's even in the top three. Freshman year was full of stuff like drinking punch with malt liquor at frat parties, drinking ice beer and then screwdrivers on the floor of someone's dorm room, getting stoned on the roof of the biology building, eating cheese fries, reading letters from boys from home I pretended I was in love with, mailing poems, lying in piles of girls in bed while watching movies instead of studying, spending most of journalism class writing stories about the stupid boring shoes on the feet of the boy in front of me, whom I badly wanted to be my boyfriend, and all that other generic freshman-year stuff. Some of it was so disappointing, some of it was so much fun, and all in all there's not much I'd ever want to relive.
Except, maybe, for the night I bought my Most Emotional T-Shirt, and a few other nights with that girl, like the time we made chocolate cake with chocolate frosting from scratch at her parents' house while her dad sat smoking cigarettes at the kitchen table and laughing at us when we got into some evil vicious monster-girl fight about how best to cream the butter. We weren't friends very long; so much bad soap-opera stuff happened and changed my heart forever; it was all very "Bells For Her". If I thought about it for long enough I could probably get very sad, but who has the time for such a thing? My memories of Chocolate Cake Fight Night and Frog And Toad Night feel more far-away than nights or days that happened when I was a tiny little girl, and I like that, because they're dreamier that way. Also this shirt doesn't look nearly as good on me as it did when I was 17, and I guess I like that too: I'm really happy for my 17-year-old self that she got to look kind of adorable in some skate-shop t-shirt she didn't actually understand. That must've been so sweet for her. (Liz)
LAURA JANE GETS SEMI-HEAVY, ABOUT SWEATERS
This sweater is coral and has wooden buttons. It is warm and I wear it around the house. It was once my grandmother's, and then it belonged to my mother for a bit, and now it belongs to me, because I stole it from my mother.
Your family existed as a family before you were born. It was 1965, and all those people (grandparents, uncles, Mom) hung out together, younger versions of those people I know now, like the Muppet Babies of them. My Dad told me the other day that he and my grandmother ( my mother's mother, who I love very much) were "quitting smoking" buddies in the early 1980s, which cuted me out. There is nostalgia for the way the world was before you were born, and there is the nostalgia you feel for all the things you ever wished could've happened but didn't; thinking about your family existing before you came along to steal the show is their pithy midpoint.
I have no idea what the circumstances of my Grandmother's purchasing this sweater were. I don't know if she wore it in Morocco, France, Canada, or all of the above. Maybe she hated it and wore it around the house on off-days like I do, or maybe it looked really good on her and she had a blouse/skirt/brooch combo she'd pair it with, for the movies or meeting her sisters for lunch or attending a parent-teacher interview. Maybe it was 1965 and she was thirty-seven years old. My mom and her brothers were teenagers, and my grandfather was two years younger than she. Their Muppet Baby Selves sat around the kitchen table and told each other stories about what they did that day. They had a black dog named Fifi. Somebody fed Fifi scraps under the table. They watched television, and the Beatles were on it. I will never, ever know my Grandmother's Beatles Opinions. This is the only kind of "not knowing" I am comfortable existing within.
I just realized that I am writing this while wearing the exact sweater I'm writing about. That's a nice detail; I appreciate the lightness of it. I'm wearing this sweater because I'd be wearing this sweater even if I wasn't writing about this sweater. Time travel back to that dumb nothing night in 1965, and my grandmother has no idea that, one day, her only daughter will have another only daughter. There is no way she can know that her sweater will one day become Laura Jane's, Laura Jane's dumpy pre-shower writing sweater.
It is November, and I now disagree with my early-October self's assertion that
coziness sucks; I was only being contrary. I have a lot of use for coziness, and this sweater is very utile. Speaking of things that are cozy: Starbucks cups turned red this week. Merry Christmas, Everyone. (Laura Jane)
Tags: army parkas, chocolate cake, college, coziness, Frog and Toad, girls, Laura loves the Beatles, matrilineage, memories, Muppet Babies, my grandmother, my mom, Starbucks, t-shirts
Share | 
| 
| 
|
|
Posted by Kat in A Day in the Life |
Permalink |
Leave a comment |
Comments (5)
+ Contact Us
+ HOME
5 Comments!!
Say something so insightful and witty, it will blow us away. (No pressure.)
Got something to say? We'd love to hear it! Name, email and "type in the weirdo drunken text" thingie are all required to comment; don't worry, we won't email you or anything, we just want to make sure you're not an evil spambot. Keeping in mind the good-times mentality we like to keep going here, we've worked hard to keep NOGOODFORME.COM as fun as possible. We welcome all kinds of comments, but insults/abuse/general bitchery are not tolerated. In other words, we put the smackdown on evil troll posts. If you want to be a hater, please go elsewhere. Now, as Salt 'N Pepa say, "Only the sexy people..."
what a lovely post, us!
By Liz
on November 4, 2009 5:36 PM
"Dad's Thai Army parka" has got to be the coolest item of clothing ever.
I wish I had something of my mom's I could wear. But that's all gone forever. I have a shirt of my dad's but it's way too big for me. I keep meaning to take it in.
Nothing makes me angrier than makeover shows or books or whatever that say to get rid of clothes you have a sentimental attachment to. There's a reason that nogoodforme is the only fashion site/magazine/anything that I can stand; you three have an actual human relationship with clothes that is really refreshing.
By John on November 4, 2009 6:49 PM
This post is definitely an end-of-Titanic string quartet "Pleasure playing with you" moment.
I think "making stuffed animals talk to each other" should be a key component of Spirit Animal House 2: The Pyjammy Jamboree.
By Laura
on November 5, 2009 9:45 AM
ah, john, that's such a nice thing to say about nogoodforme! thank you! xo k.
By Kat
on November 5, 2009 1:04 PM
i love you guys. xo k.
By Kat
on November 5, 2009 1:14 PM