The other day i chanced upon an antique in my cupboard. No, it wasn’t a precious Chinese vase from the Ming dynasty, or a Chola bronze.
The antique i found was of no intrinsic worth but had not a little sentimental value. It was an old shirt. To be exact, a shirt which must be at least 35 years old, if not older.
My wardrobe is full of clothes which can lay claim to a respectable measure of antiquity. There is a blazer which is over 40 years of age, and trousers which will never see 25 again. The youngest item in my clothes cupboard is a seven-year-old half-sleeved white shirt, the bachha of the wardrobe.
Why are all my garments of such ancient vintage? For some reason which i can’t fathom my clothes never seem to wear out and become so faded and frayed that i am forced to consign them to the raddiwala.
Don’t i get tired and fed up of wearing the same old clothes, literally for years on end? Isn’t it very boring? And the answer is ‘No, it isn’t at all’.
The older my clothes get, the better they feel to me when i put them on. The fabric seems softer for all the countless washes it’s had. And, like a long-used sofa, the shirt, or jacket, or trouser, or whatever it is, has found a way to mould itself to my bodily contours so as to provide maximum comfort.
My wardrobe is in stark contrast to the wardrobes of many, if not most, of the people i know, of both genders. By and large, people tend to chuck out their clothes long before they’ve reached what i consider their best-wear date.
Which i suppose is just as well, because if people didn’t keep renewing their wardrobes, fashion designers, and garment manufacturers, and darzis, would find themselves without jobs and join the ranks of the unemployed.
The dictates of forever-changing fashion which determine what people will wear, and when, keep the clothing industry going.
But no matter how many new clothes we acquire, we’ll always have at least one suit that’s as old as we are ourselves – the birthday suit we were born in.