The Chase

I see these great vintage shops with beautiful and reasonably-priced dresses and I used to wonder why it never felt right to buy them or even to venture into the store.
But I figured it out.
I think most of the joy in getting dressed is in the chase. The looking for it and finding it and deciding what to make out of it and after lots of seam-ripping, coming out with some sort of finished product with crooked contrast stitching and asymmetrical curves. I usually wear it the next day and fifty percent of the time I realize after a few hours of wearing it that I got a little too excited the night before and while it was awesome in theory, that Liz Claiborne dress circa 1975 does, contrary to wishing and hoping, look really odd with a hijab.

And then there is the strange satisfaction of watching the slow decay of the clothes, where the seams rip open because I did not reinforce them or I tailored them so closely to a temporary measurement with no room for adjustments for winter weight.

Sometimes I face the strange situation of discovering something on the article of clothing that refers to the living body that was once in it, like a stain or mending or a nametag. One of my latest sweaters turned out to have what looks like a bloodstain, and in the shape of a bird or the type of dinosaur that flies. Sometimes I cannot resist googling the name on the nametag and then get super creeped out if they live close to Buffalo, as was the case here. What happened, Pete? A woodshop accident? Did you go and get yourself stabbed? Is this coffee? Because I am hoping this is coffee...
Those stay at the bottom of the projects pile. Except this one, where I decided to make a bird-shaped hole and fill it with something else, which probably also had birds on it.