There’s a pretty, lightweight, short-sleeved shirt that I own. If you know me personally, it’s reasonably likely you’ll have seen me wearing it at some point.
And I’m confident that it’s the oldest piece of clothing I own. I first got it in the winter of 2001/2002, which makes it a massive 23 years old!
Given that I seem to be incapable of owning clothing without holing it in short order1, why has this shirt lasted so long? Is it imbued with some form of mystical draconic longevity?2
A 23-year-old shirt that’s been worn most months would most-likely already represent good value, but I bought this particular garment second-hand, from a stall in Preston’s Covered Market. For 50 pence! That’s cheap enough that it would have been the best-value shirt I’d ever owned even if it had fallen apart as quickly as my clothes do typically.
That it’s instead lasted over two decades is just… mind-boggling.
Footnotes
1 My socks wear holes within a year or two; my trousers gain crotch tears, possibly as a result of over-aggressive cycling, within a similar timespan; my t-shirts for some reason reliably get holes under the left armpit usually within four years, and so on.
2 With thanks to the Wayback Machine, I found an original web page about my shirt on the designer’s website (in an example of full “early 2000s” web design – look at those image navigation buttons with no alt-text! – as well as other retro touches like being able to order by fax before paying in deutschemarks). They’re still making shirts, I see, although no longer in this design.
I never would have thought to write about old clothes, but I like it! I also have lots of old clothes which are still in good shape. In fact, I am wearing my tuxedo pants right now, which I bought in 2001. I believe I have a pair of grey wool dress pants that I bought in 1993. That is probably my oldest piece of clothing. I actually did not wear them much for many years, because I gained weight. But since about 2005 they fit again, and I continue to wear them quite regularly. I had a jacket from 1995 which I finally retired in 2021 when I moved my stuff to Germany. Around 2000 I got two button up shirts from a thrift store for $1 each, which I wore for quite a few years. They were probably from the 1970s. Unfortunately one of my friends ripped one of them off of me in 2005. I don’t know what happened to the other one. Two years ago I bought a whole wardrobe for about 150€, including 10-15 shirts, 4-5 pants, two leather jackets, some gloves, scarves, etc.