“Preserved well.” in my starting Boston suburbs, those two words matter. They bounce around in the stands after an exciting football game. They giggled in the cafeteria when a Twizzler nearly hit the floor. But they matter most, at least to me, when applied to my first love – vintage clothes.
‘Nice save’ was for my mother who pulled a fur ditch from our attic and my grandfather (tannery foreman) at ’09. “Nice save” was for my dad when he rescued a vintage Marimekko dress from our neighbor’s crumbling barn. “Nice save” for me is when I find an original DVF wrap dress in the yard for $5 and wear it to class and feel like a movie star.
corresponds to, “Why didn’t you save that?”, reserved for the clothes that got away. The missing included: my mom’s embroidered flared pants, disco heels and a real disco, a leather miniskirt with a Grateful Dead skull. Seeing faded pictures of my mother in these fragments made me realize that before she became a parent, she was a person. I will never get to know her fully and it breaks my heart. It also gave me a mission: to archive all my designer clothes for my future children, once I actually got them pick them up.
first occurrence exist0504. The digital age is late enough for bloggers, but it’s early NFT looks like a typo, not Gucci’s splurge. Without seeing the virtual world, the clothes themselves can be avatars, and gosh, I have some good ones: a Marc Jacobs bubble dress, first seen at Gemma Ward; a bunch of Luella Bartley punk ball gowns; Miu Miu cat-print busts Skirt; Fendi’s python bag; APC’s oh-so-sedgwick leopard coat, collect on MySpace (MySpace!) until I save enough money to buy it.
The author wears a Christopher Kane dress.
RJ Nussbaum
The author is in high school, wearing Mommy’s Banana Republic little black dress.
in my
That nightmare stain (mostly) halfway through my , partly because Women I really admire are thriving as parents and people. Spending time with them and their (admittedly awesome) kids has given me the courage to reimagine the future of being with kids. “I can still be a mom,” I would tell my therapist. “If I found the right partner…if I started teaching college…if I joined a kibbutz…if I sold the novel and movie rights together…if it was a kibbutz but not *religion…If I get married for money…if I get divorced for
more
money…if I can even do
At all odds in Las Vegas, this actually happened – hit , I mean – I celebrated with my boyfriend of two years . We are very different, but when I look at him, all the cells in my body go, “ Yes, this. ” We talked very early and lightly about our future aspirations: an immersive theatre project (me), a major marathon record (he), and freshmen plans to live around the world. For all of these reasons — and some I don’t want to share without tequila, sorry — we’re planning a life that doesn’t include parenting. I’m incredibly at peace with this choice, especially since we made it honestly and hopeful and excited about our shared future. But now there’s a new problem: Half of our living space is crammed with clothes from my imaginary daughter, not our real-life space. Something has to give, which means I’m giving up my clothes. It’s hard and weird, but it’s the only way.
Here are the outgoing tallies so far: Five Jeremy Scott x The Longchamp handbag was confiscated by my goddaughter Madison. Two lace Chloé shirts for cousins stunned by Y2K TikTok. A bunch of them from Fiorucci to a fashion student I mentored. A Hello Kitty x AntiSocial Social Club t-shirt, now worn as a dress by an insanely cool 5 year old (my high school friend’s daughter) on her way to kindergarten. Watching these future women melt into my former self is a special pain. It is also a special privilege.
Recently, it happened last week when One-year-old Edith buzzed into my apartment. The daughter of a dear college friend who lives in wooded New England, reads books her parents try to hide, and relentlessly chases her brother through the woods. Edith doesn’t care if some woman named Phoebe Philo is in 107 but when she sees them in my closet her eyes twinkle She asked, “Can I try it??”
