The oldest clothes you still wear.

[Gangster Octopus]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

When I first went to Paris on Eurostar, shortly after it opened, I bought myself and my little brother a pair each of Tex Avery socks. I've still got mine, but I only wear them for special occasions.

[Various Artist]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Do you wear anything else with them?

SDR's post reminds me I'd forgotten about ties. I must have ties going back longer than anything else that's still wearable — the oldest one I can think of in my small collection (I don't wear ties very often at all) dates from when I was 13.

Well, oldest in continual ownership, anyway. I got a couple from my uncle the other year that are possibly older, when he retired from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and essentially vowed never to wear a tie again (his style is informal to a fault) and so got rid of all the ones he owned. One of them I'll probably never wear but grabbed at the time because it tickled me: it's covered in pictures of avocets, the bird that appears on the RSPB's logo, but the design is upside-down, so they all unfortunately appear to be dead with their feet sticking up in the air.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Velvet Android wrote: I got a couple from my uncle the other year that are possibly older, when he retired from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Is your uncle Jonathan Higgins?

[Various Artist]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

No, should I know the name?

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Velvet Android wrote: No, should I know the name?

No, unless you have an unealthy degree of knowledge of 80s TV shows.

[Various Artist]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Ah, what, the dude from Magnum PI then? Reasonably sure we're not related, yeah...

[beak]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

me mam still occasionally wears shirt that was her dads when he was in university, so that must be.. blimey, pushing 70 years old. fuck knows how that works.

I still have a shirt I had when I was 14, so 18/19 years old.

apropos of band shirts,I am currently in a dilemma about my Bongzilla 2004 tour shirt. just developed a big fuck off rip in the armpit, but am loathe to throw it out as the first tour date on the back represents the apogee of my rather pathetic career in music. think I might have to take the sleeves off (and of course restrict it to about the house use only).

[ad hoc]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Two of the t-shirts I regularly wear to exercise in say on them "Pohnpei Triathlon 1996" and "COM-FSM* Fun Run 1997" (*College of Micronesia). I can only imagine that in the 90s the t-shirts exported to the middle of the Pacific were spectacuarly durable, as I've been wearing these t-shirts on a regular (weekly) basis for nigh on 20 years and they have had a lot of wear (and an incredible amount of washing- since they get worn for less than an hour each time and then washed.

[Nurse Duckett]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

At the bottom of my "hat pile" (so hardly ever gets worn) is a ski hat that my sister brought back for me from Norway. I have a photo of me wearing it on holiday in 1980, so it's at least 35 years old.

On very cold evenings, I sometimes wear a very heavy full length tweed overcoat that I inherited from my Dad, who bought it in about 1955. It's top quality - cost something like 20 guineas back in the day.

[Slightly Brown]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Crusoe wrote: A pair of cheap desert boots I bought around 2004 that just won't die.

Ditto. It's because you can't smoke at gigs these days: the sweaty gloop on the floor doesn't have that well-that's-never-coming-out consistency that would normally ruin a good desert-boot.

[Squarewheelbike]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Recently found a top I got in 1990 at a place called "Fans" on Old Compton Street, and started wearing it again, also still got leather jacket from that era. Got a pair of heavy duty work socks in the Hudson's Bay Company in Vancouver in 1993, wear them weekly and still going strong.

[Joparo]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Around 1991-92 there was a lovely shop on Long Acre in Covent Garden called 'Davies' which unfortunately didn't last very long It was an interesting shop and it sold an eclectic mix of clothes, shoes, books and art and craft items.

When it had it's closing down it pretty much had 50% and more off all its stock. I bought a bunch of those classic John Smedley 3 button merino tops. Very nice and I still have them in my wardrobe today although, they are a bit on the tight side!!!

[HORN]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

In 2002 I worked with a guy who wore a really nice blue fleece. I wanted one. I mean I really wanted one. So off I popped to Manchester but I could only get a grey one. Or more accurately I got TWO grey ones (one with a small blue area on the shoulders).

I still wear one or other of them every day at work. I have tried replacing them but nothing lasts. They wash like a rag.

The downside is they look moreorless identical. If I work somewhere for any length of time I start to sense people's revulsion that I wear the same clothes every bleedin' day. I try and preempt this by saying imploringly "I have TWO of them. TWO. You see? Here - on the shoulders?".

[treibeis]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

HORN wrote: The downside is they look moreorless identical. If I work somewhere for any length of time I start to sense people's revulsion that I wear the same clothes every bleedin' day. I try and preempt this by saying imploringly "I have TWO of them. TWO. You see? Here - on the shoulders?".

I used to work with a bloke whose upper-body clothing in the office was, summer and winter alike, always just a white T-shirt. The T-shirt was always sparklingly clean.

('Bluey-white was' the phrase the washing-powder people used to use, and maybe still do.)

He reckons he used to buy 30 white T-shirts every two months, wear them all once, wash them all once, wear them all again and then give them to charity shops. So he was buying about 200 T-shirts a year.

I've nothing against finding what you like and sticking to it, but 200 T-shirts a year? Something not quite right there.

[delicatemoth]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

A year ago this would have been my old T.Rex t-shirt, bought from Finmere Market in the late '80s, but it's finally disintegrated. I mourned its loss on Facebook, upon which a certain former OTFer swooped in quick as a flash - "Can you no longer, um, get it on?"

[Gangster Octopus]

The oldest clothes you still wear.

Velvet Android wrote: Do you wear anything else with them?

Yes. Unless it's a very special occasion...