March 28, 2022
Editor: Alex Vena
Artist: Sydney Payton
We all see the pictures of us at about five or six years old in our father’s t-shirt, with holes in the armpits and its frayed hem, but we don’t really fully appreciate the memory of the person who wore it first. For me, it’s the 2001 William and Mary Football championship t-shirt that was made just months before I was born, or maybe the black Apple sweatshirt my grandfather gave to me that has a thumb hole from the common wear and tear from being over thirty years old. Memories are what make us whole and human, and wearing these items like a scarlet letter remind me of the memories lived by those who wore them before me.
This past summer, I got caught going through my grandfather’s closet far too many times to count. I was seen trying to hide the shirt I took from him to wear with a pair of biker shorts often enough that I needed an intervention. Yes, I know stealing isn’t cool, but it became more of a borrow-and-leave it in the washing machine when I was done with it, type of deal. This went on for about a month, until my grandfather called me downstairs one hot day in July and asked why I wanted to wear his old Atlanta Braves World Series shirt. It was his own from before I was born: why was I trying to take a denim button up in the middle of the summer? All that I could think of was “that it’s fashion,” and just like that, the next afternoon, all of his old shirts, button ups, and sweaters were sprawled across the living room for us to go through together.
That day in July had to be one of the best memories I’ve ever had with him. With each new shirt I picked up, he told me the memories behind them—how the G’Day sweater was from an Apple conference in the 90s, and how only fifty of them were ever made, or his multiknit and mismatched pattern cream sweater from when he worked at Microsoft, or, at the time, Microsoft Sun Systems. These shirts, moreso these memories, mean more to me than simple borrowing because they are a testament to special moments in my grandfather's life, and now mine. It’s just like borrowing your best friend's shirt for a night out that looks amazing on everyone who wears it because it’s not about the shirt itself, but who the shirt comes from. And while life is not about the material things it can be made up of, I feel proud whenever I wear my grandfather’s black Apple sweatshirt, and get compliments on it; I am always sure to mention that “it’s my grandpa’s!”
My little cousins now wear his clothes, too: from Lily wearing his letterman jacket from when he attended William and Mary in the 1950s to Isabelle, Hazel and Lucy wearing his old sports shirts from teams that haven’t won a Superbowl or a championship since before many of us were born. That’s the art of borrowing, we take and we exchange and sooner or later, we realize how old our favorite pieces of clothing are, and that’s what’s so special about them! Because it’s about the memories behind the clothes and the memories my kids will one day have knowing that not only did their mother wear it, but so did their great-grandfather too! While styles go in and out of fashion, the people who wore them first never will.