Clothing Worth Owning

When I was a child, my mom bought my family’s socks at inexpensive stores, and in the 1970s, that meant thin socks made of synthetic something, or white tube socks with striped cuffs in the school colors. When I was small, she mended these socks: she used a light bulb as her darning egg, stretching each heel tight before stitching the hole shut. As we grew older, the socks weren’t worth repairing and she could just as easily buy new ones.

Later when I bought hiking boots for a summer in Colorado, the salesman told me I needed ragg wool socks, which would need to be handwashed. I was skeptical, but I put them on with my new boots, and my feet boasted gray ragg wool for the next several years—I loved that the socks kept my feet warm, not only in the Rocky Mountains, but in the damp and cool months back at college.

A college friend lent me a cable-knit wool sweater that she wasn’t wearing, with leather patches on the elbows, and I tried to keep it for myself—my own sweaters were like my socks, synthetic stuff, not warm, not cozy. Surely she wasn’t wearing this ONE of her many beautiful wool sweaters? It had a little hole in one of the arms—surely she could part with this flawed sweater? The time came to return it, of course. With my first real paycheck from my first professional job, I took a bus to State College PA, where I bought a wool sweater at a South American import shop, in bright patterns of magenta, black, purple and orange. For months, I plucked the knitter’s long black hair from the stitches, and I was charmed to think of her, spinning the yarn as she walked along the road. A friend who had been to Peru told me that a traveler can find knitters in the market—a trio will measure the length of your arms and torso, then two women will knit the sleeves while the third knits the body of the sweater. You come back at the end of the afternoon and pay for your custom sweater—with bright smiles as the knitters pluck their own hairs from the final product.

I still own that sweater. I mended it and mended it, carefully matching the yarns with each repair. It’s no longer a great fit for me, but I will pass it along to my daughter after one more round of mending. 

What kind of clothing lasts? What kind of clothing is worthy of our attention?