The Clothes We Refuse to Throw Away

 

Originally published as part of Kunt Commentary by Kunts Live Forever.

By Rose Baxter

I own clothes that should have been thrown away years ago. Not donated. Not repurposed. Thrown away.

They have holes in places holes aren't supposed to be. Graphics are cracked. Black shirts have faded into that weird gray color that technically stopped being black about a hundred washes ago. There are things in my closet that probably couldn't survive an aggressive washing machine cycle without becoming several smaller pieces of clothing.

I'm keeping them, because somewhere along the way, they stopped being clothes. They became evidence.

Some Clothes Have a History

Everybody has at least one. Maybe it's an old concert shirt. Maybe it's the hoodie you've had through three relationships, four jobs and five addresses. Maybe it's a pair of boots that should have been declared legally dead years ago, but your feet have molded themselves into them so perfectly that replacing them feels like betrayal.

Maybe it's a jacket covered in patches from bands you don't even listen to anymore. You look at it and remember exactly who you were when you put the first one on.

That's the strange thing about clothing. We buy it because we need something to wear. At first, it's just a product...fabric, thread, ink, buttons and zippers.

Then life starts happening while you're wearing it.

And nobody puts that on the care label.

The Damage Is Part of It

We're constantly being sold the idea that new is better. New shoes, new jeans, new seasonal colors, new trends. A new version of the thing you already own because apparently the one from six months ago has committed some kind of fashion crime by continuing to exist.

But some of my favorite clothes look better because they've been through some shit.

The fading matters. The cracked print matters. That little hole you keep saying you're going to fix and absolutely never will matters. Wear is proof that something actually belonged to somebody.

There's a difference between buying a distressed shirt and distressing one yourself by living in the damn thing.

One is a finish. The other is a biography.

Sometimes the Value Has Nothing to Do With Money

Some of the most valuable clothes people own aren't worth anything on paper. You couldn't sell them, and nobody else would understand why you kept them.

They might look at an old shirt and see a shirt that belongs in the trash. You see where you were when you wore it. Who was sitting beside you. What music was playing. Which house you were living in. How old your kids were. Who was still alive.

That's when clothing becomes something else entirely.

There are things we keep because they're connected to people and versions of our lives that we can't go back and visit. You can replace a T-shirt. You can't replace what happened while you were wearing it.

Your Closet Is Basically an Unorganized Archive

Most of us don't think about it that way, but closets can be weird little museums. There are pieces from completely different versions of ourselves hanging inches apart.

The person you were at twenty five is sitting next to the person you became at forty. Work clothes beside concert shirts. The jacket you wore everywhere beside the thing you bought for one specific night and somehow never got rid of.

There are clothes from good years and clothes from terrible years. Things you wore while rebuilding. Things you wore while falling apart.

And occasionally there's something you pull out and immediately think, Jesus Christ. I can't believe I used to wear this.

Those deserve preservation too, if only as evidence against us.

Clothes Outlive Moments

That's probably part of why clothing has always interested me beyond fashion.

A shirt can survive the day it came from. A jacket can outlive the relationship. A pair of boots can make it through the job. A hoodie can move houses with you. Sometimes something ordinary becomes one of the few physical objects left from a particular time in your life.

You don't plan that when you buy it. Nobody stands in a store holding a T-shirt thinking, This might become emotionally significant in twelve years.

It just happens.

Life attaches itself to objects.

That's Part of What “Live Forever” Means to Me

Kunts Live Forever has a loud name. Obviously.

But underneath the profanity, dark humor and general lack of adult supervision, I've always liked the idea contained inside it.

None of us actually live forever. But pieces of us do. Stories do. Art does. Things we made do. Things we gave people do. Memories attached to completely ordinary objects can last much longer than anyone expected them to.

Sometimes that's a photograph. Sometimes it's a handwritten note. Sometimes it's an old shirt at the bottom of a drawer that you haven't worn in ten years but still can't make yourself throw away.

And maybe that's not clutter.

Maybe that's an archive.

Wear the Damn Thing

I don't want every piece of clothing I own to stay perfect. If I love something, I want to wear it. I want the black to fade. I want the print to soften. I want it to eventually look like it belongs to me instead of looking like it came out of a package five minutes ago.

Because clothes aren't supposed to spend their lives waiting for a special occasion.

Neither are we.

Wear the shirt. Beat the hell out of the boots. Put another patch on the jacket. Let your kid steal the hoodie. Take the picture. Go to the show. Make the memory.

Someday that beat up piece of clothing might be worth absolutely nothing to anybody else and completely irreplaceable to you.

Rose Baxter