365dressup

I had such big plans for the start of this project. Piles of clean, folded laundry. A staging area to photograph what I’m wearing. And a brand-new memory card so I can keep all the pictures in one place. HA! The bedroom floor is littered with dirty clothes and even though I am going to be very selective about sharing “dainty unmentionables” information, what you see in the pocket of that sweater is my very last pair of clean socks. Guess what I am doing when we get back from New Year’s Day Brunch at Old People Harvard, where my mother lives.

Anyway, about the clothes. Because this year, it’s all about the clothes. The shirt used to be Ann’s. Ann is a family practice and criminal defense lawyer who spends most of her time trying to make the world a better place. I don’t know why she didn’t want it any more. My youngest daughter Talia was at her house one day and when she came home, she handed me the shirt and said Ann had given it to me. The brand is One World, which is pretty much all I can tell you about that, but it is a very comfortable shirt that washes well.

Alex, Talia’s older sister, gave me the sweater for Hanukkah a few years ago. She got it at Target. I’ve sometimes perused their sale racks and found things, but it’s not a usual clothes-shopping destination. I would have picked out that sweater, though I’m not as sure I would have bought it. I like it a lot. It’s fuzzy and warm, like a hug. But it pulls a little across the chest if I button it all the way. (Disclosure: “Special Needs Breasts” run in my family, and I got a pair.) But it was a gift. From my daughter, no less. And who buttons long cardigans all the way up anyhow? Today it is windy and cold. I can’t wear a blanket to brunch. I’ll wear a hug from Alex instead.

The blue jeans are Levi’s 524s. They came from the Mass Bay Company in Hyannis a couple of years ago. My friend Kathy said they looked good on me and I should buy them. I met her in 1977, at my first “real” job. Mom did not allow Debby or me to work while we were in high school. Studying was our job, she said, so babysitting was as close as we got. When we graduated, we were informed that we had to get summer jobs to pay for books and incidentals in college. We lived in Utica, New York during the school year. But in 1975, a year after my father died, Mom used his life insurance money to buy a small house in Cape Cod. That’s where we spent summers.

Waitressing is a great way to earn money on Cape Cod.  I ruled it out immediately. It’s a bad profession for a klutz whose anxiety in stressful situations plays out in getting confused and shutting down. So I decided to hit the retail shops on Main Street and see if one of them might hire me. Within an hour, I had a job. I spent two summers* working at Mass Bay – then called “The Jeanery.” It was a fabulous Army/Navy, clothing and all kinds of other cool stuff store owned by a gorgeous (and taciturn-but-good-hearted) guy named Billy. Kathy was his girlfriend then, and worked there, too. Billy’s brother Paul ran the Edgartown store; his sister Lynn operated the one in Provincetown. Fast-forward to 2011. Billy and Lynn both died, too young. Kathy and Paul co-own the Hyannis store. Kathy and Billy’s son and daughter are in their 20s, roughly the same age as their dad was when he opened the Hyannis store. It’s still one of the most popular on Main Street, and I love to shop there whenever I’m on the Cape.

*In 2009, Talia spent a summer on Cape Cod. I told her she should introduce herself to Kathy and say hi. In a surprise twist, Kathy hired her on the spot. (I called and told Kathy she should fire her if she screwed up. She burst out laughing and told me that she’d hired the son of another friend earlier in the summer, and he’d told her the exact same thing.)**

(**Talia did very well and was asked back the following summer, but had settled in Madison by then.)

“I don’t think of you as being someone who is fashion-conscious,” my sister  Debby said when I told her I was going to take a picture of everything I wear for a year and write about it.

“That’s exactly the point!” I responded.

I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next 365* days, but I am sure it will be interesting. And even though I don’t officially start until tomorrow, I will tell you that I am wearing a long grey Lands’ End cotton/flannel nightgown under a brown hoodie I got in a trade. It showed up at my house some five years ago on the back of one of my daughters, who borrowed it from her friend Leah. When I told her how much I liked it, she said I could keep it. I offered one of my Roots Canada hooded sweatshirts in exchange. Which, now that I think of it, I am not sure she received. (Leah – if you’re reading this and I owe you a Roots Canada hoodie, please let me know.)

Leah’s former sweatshirt has the words “Lambeau” across the front in white-trimmed gold felt letters. Centered beneath, on a white felt oval trimmed in gold thread, is an embroidered image in copper, silver and white of Curly Lambeau throwing a football. It’s framed on either side by 19 and 57, the year the Green Bay Packers played their first season in Lambeau Field. (I never knew those letters were felt. I’ve already learned something interesting.)

Packers attire is ubiquitous in my city, which is not surprising given that it’s pretty much the unofficial state uniform here in Wisconsin. But I have never seen a sweatshirt like this one.

As to the nightgown, I like Lands’ End well enough, but I don’t go to the Inlet very often because I’m not much of a shopper. My mother and sister, however, are cuckoo for Lands’ End, and a couple of years ago they were here at the same time – Mom from Hyannis and Debby from Edmonton. Debby wanted to try and find some khaki pants for my skinny nephew Noah. She didn’t, but Mom and I each got one of the grey nightgowns and I found a bright yellow very warm-looking fleece hat in a back-of-the-store-closeout-sale-bin for $8. Then my friend Grace’s dog Zoe gave me a felted rose pin for Hanukkah. I pinned it to the hat.

A month later came a day when the temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chills no one wants to think about. On the walk to my office from the parking structure a block away, a young man exiting his car started yelling at me.

I kept going. He kept yelling. I stopped and looked back.

“I like your hat!” he yelled. “Can I buy it?”

The hat was keeping my head warm. I was not interested in selling it and even if I had been, I was running late and not interested in taking time to conduct sales transactions on the street in the dead of winter.

“Thanks and it’s not for sale,” I said as I resumed walking.

He kept yelling. I turned back to face him while continuing to walk in the same direction.

“I’ll give you $100!”

That stopped me. $100? What to think? Was this guy part of a reality show? Was a camera crew hidden somewhere? Maybe there was a woman in his life – girlfriend? mother? – whom he knew would love the hat so much that he was willing to buy it off the head of a stranger on the street in order to please her? The answer was still no. I liked it. I was keeping it.

I have other hats, but that’s the only one with a name. I call it my “$100 hat,” and have been told many times by people who’ve heard the story that I should have sold it. One day, I may give it away if I don’t wear it any more. But I don’t think I would ever sell it. It keeps my head warm, but there’s more to it than that.

A passing stranger once wanted that hat. He wanted it so much within seconds of seeing it that he assigned it a tangible value and made an offer to purchase. He gave my hat an identity and a story. His actions that day elevated the hat’s status as an object. Mine turned it into a symbol. Realizing that I wanted to keep it more than I needed $100 was an unprecedented event in my adult life.

No one ever offered to buy something I was wearing before that morning, and no one has since. Which is just fine by me.

*I know it’s a leap year. One day – and I do not know which – I am going to leave everyone wondering.