I love wearing clothes with history. Not just vintage clothes, i mean clothes that actually have sentimental value for me, or for someone out there. Part of my halloween costume (i ended up going as marie antoinette, actually, but it was rather nice all the same) was the skirt of a wedding dress, dumped unceremoniously in vinnies (charity store) for me to find, alter a little, and form into a marie antoinette costume. I asked the guy at the counter, with a little trepidation, whether the couple had split up, or something like that. I would be horrible if they had. But he said no, she just didn't have any room for it, and she wasn't particularly sentimental about it. I wasn't quite sure whether to take that as a good thing or a bad thing, but i bought the dress anyway.
Likewise one of my favourite pieces of clothing, one that has never let me down and that i will wear until i die, is a vintage lanvin flower shirt of my mother's. She was given it by her best friend in the whole entire world (who has the best taste, and looks like sofia coppola, dammit), and like me, used to wear it everywhere. It's funny, we're not that similar now, mum and I, and I'm half chinese and she's not, but we look remarkably similar. We talk the same way, we smile the same way, and we share all these mannerisms. People say when I wear the flower shirt and chatter away, gesticulating wildly, I remind them so much of my mum when she was my age. And though I roll my eyes, actually I feel quite proud.
Because despite all appearances now, my mum was actually so cool in the 80s! Like my fabulous aunt, she has inherently good taste as well as an appreciation for beautiful things. Although unlike my aunt she didn't really galivant around for the whole of the 80s and 90s through Europe and New York. My mum has all these amazing stories to tell that i love hearing about uni life, about being a young doctor, about travel, about boyfriends, about weird guys who used to stalk her (and make her watermelon baskets, like a basket carved out of a watermelon with individual fruits carved out of the watermelon flesh! WTF! hahaahahah), and i drink them in. She has so much life experience and spirit of adventure, and you can tell that about her now. Just like my Aunt, people really love my mum. She's funny and vivacious and she engages you, no matter who you are.
The flower shirt used to be as much a part of her wardrobe as it is mine. It's a beautiful shirt, Jeanne Lanvin really knew how to cut a garment. It's semi-sheer with this gorgeous multicoloured floral print that goes with every colour in the known spectrum no joke. It's bracelet length, which in my opinion is the most beautiful length - exposing your wrists can be a really lovely thing in clothing - and it's suitably baggy, so when tucked into a skirt it just sort of puffs up over the top of a belt. Perfect. I cannot fault this garment. It has never let me down in 4 years of wearing it, it has always fit well, looked beautiful and made me feel happy when everything else was letting me down.
The real reason I love this shirt, though, was because my mum wore it to my christening. Cue the awww.. But there is just something so special about it now for me. I wear a lot of my mum's clothes, she has great basics and some unexpected lovely finds in her wardrobe despite the fact she dresses quite simply now, but none of them means that much to me in terms of sentimental value. This shirt has history. She's told me she's worn it to bizarre uni parties where one guy ended up so drunk he boarded a one way flight to fiji wearing nothing but a hessian sack and a moneybag filled with oranges. She's worn it when she met her then boyfriend's parents, a lord and lady in england (who referred to her as the 'australian gel'). She's worn it when she's flown halfway around the world to rescue her sister from a broken heart, and when she's driven all around Sydney searching for her brother who got lost at a school excursion. And she wore it to my christening. I was born on Christmas Eve, so they christened me on Christmas day, when I was only 1 day old. My mum's there, beaming with happiness, my dad's there, so proud, all my family are there and my mum's best friend, all smiling wildly. Mum gave me the shirt when i turned 14 and told me all these stories about it, and I love it all the more for it.
I was recently looking at some photos and pasting them into a scrapbook. I had pasted a photo of me in, wearing the flower shirt and head cocked onto the side, grinning, into the first page. I was sifting through some photos at the bottom of a box when I found one of my mum, age similar to my own, wearing the flower shirt and holding up a champagne saucer to the camera. We look so alike it's stunning. When I was a bit younger I used to hate it when people said that to me, you know when you're a surly teenager and the last thing you want is to look like your mum?
Well i'm so glad I do. Because hopefully it means I might have half as many adventures as she did.
X
Likewise one of my favourite pieces of clothing, one that has never let me down and that i will wear until i die, is a vintage lanvin flower shirt of my mother's. She was given it by her best friend in the whole entire world (who has the best taste, and looks like sofia coppola, dammit), and like me, used to wear it everywhere. It's funny, we're not that similar now, mum and I, and I'm half chinese and she's not, but we look remarkably similar. We talk the same way, we smile the same way, and we share all these mannerisms. People say when I wear the flower shirt and chatter away, gesticulating wildly, I remind them so much of my mum when she was my age. And though I roll my eyes, actually I feel quite proud.
Because despite all appearances now, my mum was actually so cool in the 80s! Like my fabulous aunt, she has inherently good taste as well as an appreciation for beautiful things. Although unlike my aunt she didn't really galivant around for the whole of the 80s and 90s through Europe and New York. My mum has all these amazing stories to tell that i love hearing about uni life, about being a young doctor, about travel, about boyfriends, about weird guys who used to stalk her (and make her watermelon baskets, like a basket carved out of a watermelon with individual fruits carved out of the watermelon flesh! WTF! hahaahahah), and i drink them in. She has so much life experience and spirit of adventure, and you can tell that about her now. Just like my Aunt, people really love my mum. She's funny and vivacious and she engages you, no matter who you are.
The flower shirt used to be as much a part of her wardrobe as it is mine. It's a beautiful shirt, Jeanne Lanvin really knew how to cut a garment. It's semi-sheer with this gorgeous multicoloured floral print that goes with every colour in the known spectrum no joke. It's bracelet length, which in my opinion is the most beautiful length - exposing your wrists can be a really lovely thing in clothing - and it's suitably baggy, so when tucked into a skirt it just sort of puffs up over the top of a belt. Perfect. I cannot fault this garment. It has never let me down in 4 years of wearing it, it has always fit well, looked beautiful and made me feel happy when everything else was letting me down.
The real reason I love this shirt, though, was because my mum wore it to my christening. Cue the awww.. But there is just something so special about it now for me. I wear a lot of my mum's clothes, she has great basics and some unexpected lovely finds in her wardrobe despite the fact she dresses quite simply now, but none of them means that much to me in terms of sentimental value. This shirt has history. She's told me she's worn it to bizarre uni parties where one guy ended up so drunk he boarded a one way flight to fiji wearing nothing but a hessian sack and a moneybag filled with oranges. She's worn it when she met her then boyfriend's parents, a lord and lady in england (who referred to her as the 'australian gel'). She's worn it when she's flown halfway around the world to rescue her sister from a broken heart, and when she's driven all around Sydney searching for her brother who got lost at a school excursion. And she wore it to my christening. I was born on Christmas Eve, so they christened me on Christmas day, when I was only 1 day old. My mum's there, beaming with happiness, my dad's there, so proud, all my family are there and my mum's best friend, all smiling wildly. Mum gave me the shirt when i turned 14 and told me all these stories about it, and I love it all the more for it.
I was recently looking at some photos and pasting them into a scrapbook. I had pasted a photo of me in, wearing the flower shirt and head cocked onto the side, grinning, into the first page. I was sifting through some photos at the bottom of a box when I found one of my mum, age similar to my own, wearing the flower shirt and holding up a champagne saucer to the camera. We look so alike it's stunning. When I was a bit younger I used to hate it when people said that to me, you know when you're a surly teenager and the last thing you want is to look like your mum?
Well i'm so glad I do. Because hopefully it means I might have half as many adventures as she did.
X
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