blue

This weekend just gone I abandoned my mission to sort out all my vintage clothes. A project I started in the xmas holidays. Yep, total fail. Over the years I have accumulated a whole spare wardrobe of vintage clothes, dresses mostly, that I don't really wear any more. I bought them all back when you could get stuff in op-shops, kind of pre the explosion of vintage dress shops. There was even this insane place called Windsor Wiper Sales (perhaps it still exists?) that sold piles and piles of second hand clothes, all for one dollar each. It was like some weird dream. This was also pre everything being on the internet, and they didn't advertise themselves, you had to ring them up and ask when their next sale was. Then you'd go along, line up, get given a big plastic bag in exchange for a gold coin donation, and go nuts! I think most of it was actually stuff that had been rejected by op shops, for buttons missing or other minor crimes. It would all arrive in huge bales that they'd slash open onto trestle tables, and you would have to seriously rummage through it all. I was a broke uni student and I'd come home with a bag full of 20 different items for $20 and be so completely stoked.

But anyway... I used to wear some of this stuff, other bits I used as fabric to make stuff, other bits I just enjoyed owning. These days though, while I still like owning it, it does take up a whole wardrobe (and this is not counting the cupboard full of bags, yes, seriously a cupboard full) and I very rarely wear it. Over xmas I pulled the whole lot out with the intention of trying it all on, and sending most of it on its way, either back to the op-shop, or perhaps to sell at a vintage market or something. But it was all a bit hard. I realized I really liked it all still, and of course might want to wear it one day... so it all sat in a giant pile. A too hard pile. Until last week when we had some slightly cooler weather and I realized my doona was at the bottom of the pile. And also I would quite like to have the spare room back to some kind of functional state. So I packed the lot up. Back into the wardrobe!

H.