Old Clothes Are Like Old Friends

Can’t Let Them Go

Old is gold, yes we know, but old is also silver sometimes, like this, our 100th issue, 25 years, the Silver Anniversary.
To celebrate the occasion, I could not think of writing about anything, except about the clothes I wore and still wear from decades ago. Well, 25 years is a long time and I am still wearing clothes from that long ago! Tells you two things about me. That I am still able to get into my old clothes, so my weight has pretty much remained static and that I don’t throw away my clothes just because they are old!

Yup, I wear my old clothes happily, joyfully, proudly. I am more well-versed with the section of the wardrobe that houses my well-worn, well-loved clothes, than the new ones that I tend to even forget I have. How does that work? I guess, old is gold because the quality of dresses and jeans I bought 25 years ago and even before that, are still so good, still so perfect. Be it the fabric, style or cut! Clothes then were made to last, not thrown away after a few wears.

Old clothes to me are like old friends. Easy, breezy, comfy. Then there is the memory attached with each clothing that brings such a flood of nostalgia which nothing can replace. Talk about the black fishnet stockings I wore with an ultramarine, clingy, mini, for a super party thrown by Anu Mahindra (Moody Blues, she called it), and I can go, awww… I still have both, but would feel silly wearing such a short dress anymore. Now, it’s a keepsake.

I am sentimental about my old clothes. I attach good value to my emotionality. Though that does go against the principle of detachment which I am trying to achieve in other areas. With old clothes, it’s different. They fit so snug, they smell so nice, they remind you of you, long ago, of the different phases of your life. When you were a woman in a hurry. Times when you were running a newspaper and were too busy to even care how you dressed. Times when you wore the same pair of jeans day in and day out, tucked in with white men’s shirts stitched by J Dias and Sons (I had 10 identical ones made)! And since I predominantly wore jeans, I did possess about 30 pairs! Many of which I still have but will soon give away. The squeezed belly now protests! That’s one memory I hate to let go. We did have such flat stomachs, didn’t we? My friends called mine the diving board!

If old clothes speak of one’s personality –who you were, how you chose to dress, what trend you followed, then it will show overall that I was a rather simple dresser. Subtle, elegant, yes, but I never could wear loud and shiny clothes. Or show skin. I always thought showing cleavage was crass, rather unbecoming.

The pattern of shopping remains the same for most of us. Be it colour, cut or style. I still shop for the kind of clothes I did, back then. Perhaps even at the same places. I still remember what I bought where, even how much I paid. Streets of Bangkok, little shops in Paris, opposite The Opera, boutiques in Hamburg and Bremerhaven. Oxford Street was de rigueur… Wallis, my favourite brand.

Old clothes remind me of my much younger self, when I was kind of attractive, but not so aware (the word they often used for me was ‘svelte’). That’s the luxury of youth. Not knowing, not caring. When the mirror didn’t bother you at all. These days when I wear clothes from that time, I am reminded of my feelings then and I do tend to feel younger. Though quite honestly, that is not quite why I wear old clothes. I wear them because they are in prime condition, look good, and I get into them with ease. And I couldn’t be bothered by what people think.

My home in Panchgani is the place I meet my ‘old friends’ the most. Stuff I had taken there long ago are my comfort clothes. Baby pink dungarees I loved and lived in when I was first married (that’s 39 years ago), Esprit jeans which have zippers all over and were such a craze. My maroon Kashmiri woollen pheran which makes me feel so cosy in the winters as also the Kashmiri dressing gown with its colorful embroidery adapting a papier-mâché design, which I bought on the Bund in Srinagar eons ago. My sports clothes from my hockey-playing also hold me in good stead; old shorts and tracks and yes, my nighties, my dear old nighties. The older the better; soft cottons, always white, mainly M&S, where the lace is frayed and falling off. But I sleep best in these and often dream good dreams, too!

It’s not as if I am a hoarder. There are many old clothes I have given away, but I take the trouble to find young college-going girls, nieces of friends, who will wear them and value them as I did. Yet, there are clothes in the wardrobe begging for attention. Ones that we hope to wear one day when we have hopefully lost a few inches here and there. Which I know will never happen. These and others, I regularly send to an orphanage
in Mazagaon.

Going down memory lane, I remember how annoyed I would be with my husband, when we were going abroad for holidays. Behram would come to me and gently remind me saying, ‘please empty your cupboard’. He had a rule, before you buy new clothes, make space on your shelves! If you plan on coming back with 10 things you should remove 20! How right he was. But then he was a man who possessed just four Lacoste T-shirts and four Raymond’s trousers. Two Madras lungis and two muslin Parsi sadras. A pair of tan suede Bally shoes, which he wore, there was no extra pair! When the shoes wore out, he would go buy another pair and request the salesman to throw away the old ones.

But then he was a true, organic Wabi Sabi man and I am only a Wabi Sabi aspirant!