Lost and Found

“Sometimes I like to think someone died in the clothes I’m wearing.”

writing MIKKI JANOWER

I was fifteen and starry-eyed for an eighteen-year-old cigarette smoker with a ukelele, and a tendency to mansplain Kendrick Lamar. As he talked, he tugged a chunky knit crewneck over his curls. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “Someone definitely died in this.” He bought the crewneck, so I bought one too.

I still think about that statement, and not just because it sounds quasi-necrophilic in retrospect. I’m infatuated with the idea that articles of clothing have stories of their own, woven into their fabric as immovably as seams. I can’t say I like to think anyone has died in my clothes, but I love to think about who found them first. I glean what I can of their origin stories: I know my bleach-stained Pink Floyd tee, for instance, made its way into my attic via my father, who snuck backstage while backpacking in Switzerland. Other pieces, however, leave me wondering – who in the known universe owned a sheer slip with a red dragon embroidered on each breast? Whose gold brooch am I so tragically unable to style?

Sometimes I think about whoever finds my clothes next. The inheritor of my favorite cuffed jeans will no doubt be curious where the stains on the left leg came from (For the record: the yellow one is paint, the dark one is wine, and the red one is blood). The next owner of my ‘85 Hall and Oates tour jacket will never know I stumbled across that jacket twice, six months and sixty miles apart, and took it as a sign that we belonged to each other. I hope that whoever finds my homemade chain belt has less trouble fastening it than I do. My dark green midi skirt – purchased for ninety-nine cents, although I had to mend the buttons myself – has made it to three continents so far, and I wonder whether it will ever see all seven.

The beauty of found items is that each has a story. Every piece I find reminds me that somewhere, sometime, somebody has died or spilled paint or fallen in love or fallen asleep or caught a train or missed a plane and in some way or another launched a piece of their lives into my orbit. I wear my found items with the knowledge that I am living in somebody’s legacy and that someday, somebody else will be wearing my own story on their sleeve. I can only hope that the clothes I’ve lost and found serve as testaments to who I am and where I’ve been.

I am nineteen and, despite past efforts to enlighten me, have only just begun to understand the virtues of listening to Good Kid Ma.Ad City as a concept album rather than a series of singles. I still wear that crewneck.