Wearable Americana, by Jim Ross

Listen to the essay here:

Prior generations didn’t throw things away if they could be patched up or repurposed. As a pre-teen, Dad took me to buy a pair of black leather shoes, which I (i.e., he) had resoled and reheeled seven times. When Mom finally decided the shoes had to go, Dad asked, “Why, what’s wrong with them?” His question was reminiscent of a joke often told in the early 1940s. One person says, “I think my kid might grow up to become President.” The other person says, “Why? What’s wrong with Roosevelt?” At that point, Roosevelt was in his third or fourth term. 

While our home is filled with all sorts of items that we’ve warmly received from prior generations, the ones that especially fascinate me are those that are wearable. 

Wedding dresses were historically passed from
generation to generation on the once-accurate assumption that fashion didn’t change.

Clothing Worn Only for Rituals

We still have my wife Ginger’s grandmother’s Christening dress fashioned of handmade lace. Created in 1894 by Ginger’s great-grandmother, it was subsequently worn by Ginger’s mother in 1913, Ginger’s older sister in 1936, and by Ginger herself in 1952. A photo shows the Christening dress was four times Ginger’s body length! No other newborn has worn it since. Our daughter didn’t wear it in 1979 because she was born bigger than the dress.    

Wedding dresses were historically passed from generation to generation on the once-accurate assumption that fashion didn’t change. We still own four generations of wedding dresses, including Ginger’s grandmother’s from 1911; none have ever been re-worn. My daughter, who couldn’t fit into great-grandma’s Christening dress, wanted to wear her wedding dress but, no surprise, it proved too small.

Dad’s Wearable Inheritances

When Dad turned twenty in 1935, his father, who happened to work at a men’s haberdashery and appreciated quality clothing, gave him a square-necked, stockinette-stitched, burgundy sweater. Dad wore the sweater for twenty years, then put it on mothballs. He turned it over to me as I turned twenty in 1967. I wore it for fifteen years until my wife said, “We need to preserve it. I’ll knit you a clone.” 

I wore the burgundy, square-necked clone until I outgrew it, and/or it shrank. I planned to give the original to our son Alex when he turned twenty, but due to a phenomenal growth spurt—ten inches in one year—he outgrew it at fifteen,  while I was blinking. He now owns both the original and the clone. His plan, he says, is when his son turns fourteen, he’ll look for the moment to gift it, knowing his son will be wearing his ancestors. The incredible thing about this square-necked sweater is that it still looks like one you might buy today in a fashionable men’s store. 

Similarly, Dad wore his father’s gray-to-lavender sweater, as we called it, on and off for sixty-four years—from his father’s premature death in 1936 until his own. Already over 100 years old, the sweater looks not so much threadbare as something an old bank clerk would wear in a silent film. In wearing it, Dad preserved everything his Dad represented to him. Impervious to the ravages of time, that sweater hangs in Alex’s closet, making him the fourth generation to own it (though I doubt he’ll ever wear it). Its hanger is marked Lambert’s, the name of the haberdashery where Dad’s parents worked, and where the couple first met. 

Dad also wore his Dad’s lavish blue robe with red trim and a golden-tasseled sash for twenty years. He relinquished it to me when I was eight. I wore it in a play sponsored by the Cub Scouts. While I was away at college, Mom decided we no longer needed it. Meanwhile, she bought Dad a replacement–burgundy and gray stripes on terrycloth—which he wore for over forty years. Upon Dad’s death twenty-four years ago, I took it over.  

Mom’s Wearable Inheritances

Mom didn’t own inherited clothing received from her Mom. Alas, when Mom’s father split to sail the seven seas, her mother and widowed grandmother shared a room at a rooming house while toiling inhumane hours as Irish washerwomen.  Mom inherited no clothing from her mother worthy of keeping. 

Mom left behind scores of simple, inexpensive dresses that, as they went out of style over a period of sixty years, she had placed on mothballs. Her collection of dresses spanned the 1930s through the 1990s, and we stored them for a decade before starting to cull. The keepers we returned to mothballs, knowing a future generation would have a field day with them. They can’t be worn again too soon, a reminder that style never goes out of style.

Mom’s dress collection includes a sleek, almost austere, tan dress with turquoise trim. When I was fourteen, and Mom forty-three, she told me, “Remember, someday, I want to be buried in this one.” When she died fifty-two years later, the dress was out of style, her shape had changed (though she weighed the same), and only I knew this was the dress. Mom was buried in something more suited to her age and prevailing styles so people would say, “That’s so her.” 

Clothing of the Deceased

After the death of a loved one, many people clear the air by disposing of or donating the deceased’s clothing. I knew a woman who after her husband died cursed the sun for having the nerve to rise. She repeatedly breathed in the scent from her husband’s clothing to experience his presence. Then one day she suddenly cleared out his closets and dresser and disposed of everything. We might have considered attempting the deep breathing technique with our loved one’s clothing, but the prospect of inhaling mothballs was not inviting.

Not long ago, when someone bought a new sweater or dress,
they expected to use it for years.

The Future of Inheriting Clothing

Not long ago, when someone bought a new sweater or dress, they expected to use it for years. Clothing, like almost everything else, was built to last, and back then, consumption habits weren’t driven by rapidly changing styles. The climate crisis has caused activists to encourage the public to buy used clothing, exchange used clothing with others, repair items to keep them in service longer, and pass clothing along from generation to generation.

Clothing is most readily inheritable if gifted from generation to generation by the owner while still alive—and more likely to stay in the family if the relationship between the giver and inheritor is strong. It’s a meaningful legacy, one that symbolizes the nature of that relationship. Inherited clothing, even if it smells of mothballs. 

Now and then, I slip on my Dad’s gray-to-lavender sweater, purchased about the time he was born, and owned by Dad more than three times as long as his father owned it. I feel its softness. When I look in the mirror, I see flashes of my Dad donning it over the seven decades in which it was his. Sometimes, it looks so old, when I look at myself in the mirror, I see Bob Cratchett.

The day I long to see is when Alex turns over the sweater to his son as his son turns fourteen. He’ll be the fourth generation to own it and the fifth to touch it. I hope he won’t have already outgrown it. Maybe we should start at twelve as a hedge against any growth spurts.  

____________

Note: The author’s family photo was taken by Lawson P. Ramage, the author’s father-in-law (eight years after he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by FDR), and pictures Ginger Ramage Ross, the author’s wife, on her Christening Day in 1952