Saving it for best

Every day, when selecting what I'm going to wear, I have fight the small voice inside my head that says, “Don’t wear that, you need to save it for best”. The same voice tells me to put a new clothes purchase away in the drawer as soon as it arrives home, because I need to “save it for best”. I thought I was the only person doing this. If I buy my husband a new fleece he will put it on straight away, or at least the next day – even if he’s just going out to chop wood. When I started to think about writing on this topic I did a bit of research and found that I am not alone. On her fantastic blog Recovering Shopaholic discusses these tendencies and attributes them to three factors: the fear of wearing out an item, the belief that our everyday lives are not worthy of wearing our favourite clothes, and the fear that of not finding other clothes that we will like as much.

I’ve realised that one of the main reasons I instinctively try to save my favourite clothes “for best” is because that is how I was brought up. My mother was a good seamstress and made most of my clothes. Unfortunately they were never very fashionable, which caused me a few problems with some of my more unpleasant classmates – the purple crimpelene trousers spring to mind, in particular. Very few of my clothes were “shop bought” and I wasn’t allowed a pair of denim jeans, despite much pestering. I remember a “party dress” my Mother made me, in a pink, paisley, silky, nylon fabric, with a drop waist, gathered skirt and ribbon sash (this was the seventies!). I probably only wore it three or four times, if I ever tried to put it on for any other occasion, even Christmas Day, I was told that I had to “save it for best”.

School uniform was also clothing that had to be “saved” and the minute I was through the front door I had go upstairs and change into old clothes (no jeans, mind!). Whilst I can see the sense in this from a parent’s perspective, it still affects me today. All my working life I had two sets of clothes, work clothes and other clothes and never the twain shall meet. As soon as I got home from work I had to discard my work ‘uniform’ and change into other clothes, I could not sit around the house in a work suit. I suppose that it was living through the War, with rationing and little money for clothes, even if they had been available, that created this mind set in my Mother, which she passed on to me.

The last time I wore the pink t-shirt - June 2009

One of the reasons I still have so many of my original Rohan clothes is that I haven’t worn them – I’ve been keeping them for best! Despite the fact that Rohan bring out several collections a year, and I can always find several new things to buy, I like the safety net of some unworn items, just in case. A particular pink T-shirt comes to mind; it matches a (technical) summer skirt I bought on Ebay. It also goes with lots of other things. I didn’t wear the pink t-shirt last year, or the year before, in fact I can’t remember when I last wore it. I found a photo taken whilst we were travelling, so it has been worn at least once. But watch out, because now I’m fighting the small voice that tells me to save my favourite clothes for best, and next year the pink t-shirt will be in the summer capsule.