Clothes hamper wardrobe expansion
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

I should have gotten out of the relationship years ago. But you know what it's like. You meet. You fall in love. Things go downhill, but so slowly you don't notice the deterioration. Or you do, but you fool yourself into pretending everything's OK.

That was me, until I woke up 10 years later - yesterday, to be precise - and realized here we were, ``celebrating'' a big anniversary (scrimshaw? pleather?), and we hadn't been out together in years. Or, ever, really.

So I reached in my closet, grabbed the beautiful ivory silk shirt with French cuffs that I've never worn by the neck of its hanger, and put it in the give-away bag.

(Please, don't ask the price; I can't bear to see it in print.)

I hate to play the victim, but that shirt had been holding me back. With it at home, still wearing its price tag, I couldn't buy another ivory blouse, which my wardrobe desperately needed. Suits, skirts, pants - many couldn't be worn for lack of the appropriate top. Yet the shirt I owned (or was owned by) was too fancy to go where I went, to go with my hair or anything else that I owned.

But to give it away - that would be to admit defeat. To admit I'd wasted money, that I'd never go to elegant cocktail parties, never be stylish enough to pull off a loose, flowy blouse.

And what if I did give it up, and then just the right occasion arose - which you know it would. Who wants to spend the rest of her life mourning the one that got away?

``There should be a museum for clothes that didn't work out,'' a friend said.

``This is Beth Teitell's blouse. At the time of purchase she thought she'd be a magazine editor living on the Upper East Side, but her life took a different path.''

My friend had her own sob story to tell. She recently gathered the strength to donate a pair of beloved black pants that were past their prime and, to be honest, weren't doing her any favors. But now she's a haunted woman, doomed to search the stores for a clone.

``I miss them,'' she said. ``I wonder where they are now.''

The relationship that grows between a person and a garment is far more loaded than a technical description of the particulars would suggest: she's an adult female, it's a yard or two of denim.

``I have a suit I've never worn,'' a woman confided to me in a whisper. It was if she were saying ``I'm not nice to animals,'' or ``I took candy from a baby.''

All successful relationships are the same - you buy it, you wear it, you give it away - but each unhappy relationship is different.

Sometimes there's a weight issue, and a pair of high school jeans are moved from rental apartment to condo to house, packed and unpacked, tried on and put away until that mystical day when the zipper zips or, mercifully, the pants are somehow ``lost.''

Or maybe the albatross in question was a gift. ``You can't give away a sweater your grandmother gave you for your birthday, even if you never wear it,'' a woman told me, mentioning that she has had just such a sweater for the better part of a decade. ``I'll take it - unworn - to my grave.''

Or, as in the case of the suit, the peer pressure was too strong to resist, and the person leaves the store knowing she will never wear what she has just bought.

If you listen to the experts they'll tell you to get rid of clothes you haven't worn in six months, or a year, or two, but that's easier said than done.

You know, now that I think about it, I might wear that ivory blouse after all. Maybe when I get home I'll sneak it out of the give-away bag, and promise myself that if I don't wear it within the next three months I'll definitely give it away. Definitely. Or make that six months.