Clothing, unlike real estate, does not accrue value merely by virtue of being in New York City and technically habitable. I discovered this when my mother announced, early this summer, that she planned to sell our childhood home. At first, my sister and I were distraught. Aside from how my mother’s leaving brownstone Brooklyn for Midtown East felt about as culturally shrewd as leaving the cast of a daring and successful cable series for a morning talk show, this apartment was the theatre of our youth, and parting with it would be painful. But Mom could not be swayed, so we began to clean out our closets.
Before us lay a wrinkled survey of Brooklyn teen-age fashion at the turn of the twenty-first century, from Canal Jean Co. to Woodbury Common. There were high-school dances, bar mitzvahs, college visits, weddings, hand-me-downs from fashionable relatives, Halloween costumes. From my mother’s closet, we added the Wall Street arc from shoulder pads to Eileen Fisher. Much of it was iconic, ironic, or both. “Sarah,” I said to my sister, “we could make a fortune.”
Over the years, we had shed unwanted clothing in sporadic dumps. What remained was the most bizarre and the most precious: Smurf-blue linen cargo pants, a tight white-lace dress with a zillion snaps, tube tops and tattered sweatshirts, an Abercrombie & Fitch miniskirt the size of a belt. Much of this went into bags for donation, or into the trash, along with the canister of the Gap’s Grass perfume and a drawerful of viscous lip gloss. But the trapezoidal purple Furla purse (a gift) and square-toed Robert Clergerie pumps (Morgan Stanley, circa 1990) joined the tidy stacks of cardigans, patterned skirts, and undersized pants for the waiting hipsters at consignment stores. Yes, we are leaving Brooklyn, and we are leaving behind the clothing we wore before you knew Bushwick from Buffalo. You’re welcome.
On a bright summer afternoon, I hauled six bags—a fraction of our total share—to Park Slope, where a number of consignment stores thrive in the shadow of the Barclays Center. I’d dismissed the other option, eBay—it seemed too time-consuming, and besides, you don’t want to sell your spaghetti-strap Armani Exchange dress to just anyone. I glided up the aisle at Beacon’s Closet and rested my bags beside the counter, behind which several women were sifting through piles of clothing. I had hoped to watch the selection in person, as if presenting a dog at Westminster, but there was a line. I spent an hour at a nearby coffee shop, meditating upon my impending windfall.
I returned to find my bags on the floor where I’d left them, packed to the brim. “So, we’re taking three pieces today,” the young woman told me, with a hint of cheerful impatience. She offered me twenty dollars in cash, or thirty-five in store credit, for their selections, including a never-worn Anna Sui mint-green chiffon skirt that I was sure would fetch at least fifty dollars. The remaining clothing they would donate for me: “Just leave it in that black trash bag,” she said, nodding toward the corner.
“All of it?” I asked, certain there had been a mistake. “I could sell it somewhere else, right?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “It’s your clothing.”
It is my clothing, I thought, as I tenderly refolded my brown Brooks Brothers skirt, worn for an undistinguished performance at a high-school debate tournament. I collected my cash, repacked my bags—leaving behind a few threadbare sweaters and floppy shoes—and marched up the street to my next sale.
* * *
“You need to strategize,” my friend Lily told me. She had recently taken in more than a hundred dollars at Beacon’s Closet. “Right now, they want fall clothing. And you have to think about their audience. They want brand names—brands that are popular with young people, not old-lady stuff.” But Lily, who has looked like Cate Blanchett since she was fourteen and works at an auction house, is precisely the kind of person from whom consignment stores want to buy: her closet is lined with gently worn size fours that are fashion-forward but timeless. My closet is packed with gimmicky T-shirts.
Some clothing we hold onto out of nostalgia: the tapered sweatpants from my high-school softball team, my grandmother’s flying-squirrel tunic. Despite the increasingly desperate interventions of several friends, I continue to wear the black-velvet, zebra-print Betsey Johnson two-piece ensemble I got for my best friend’s bat mitzvah in 1997. Other clothes we hold onto—like VCRs or Beanie Babies—in hopes that they will, someday, once again amount to something. Recent fashion cycles have reaffirmed my longstanding unwillingness to part with my burgundy steel-toe Doc Martens, from eighth grade. The same cannot be said of the stilettos I bought on clearance a decade ago in Beirut and in which I actually cannot walk, but they are spectacularly cool and I am keeping them anyway. My grandmother gave me a white, floor-length, hooded mink coat, which I have never worn out of the house. Selling it might pay my rent—and allay my guilt over owning a fur coat—but then I couldn’t conceivably dress up as Lara Antipova or Lil’ Kim for Halloween.
* * *
The man behind the counter at Eleven Consignment Boutique continued his telephone conversation while he flipped through my clothing. I felt compelled to offer commentary:
“That’s a good work skirt, I think.”
“Oh, that’s—no? Really?”
“Who doesn’t need a turtleneck?”
Finished, he cupped his hand over the phone, turned to the smaller pile and said, flatly, “Here’s what we’ll take. We’ll only give credit, no cash, because these are generic, not unique brands or pieces.”
Not unique brands or pieces? That is my mother’s Dana Buchman wool skirt! I accepted the eighty-dollar credit, stuffed my clothing back into my bags, and walked out.
Next door, at Life Boutique Thrift, a manager greeted me with a smile and I nearly embraced her in reciprocal gratitude. I wanted to tell her about my mother’s apartment, and how I came to own all of these sweater vests. “We’ll take whatever you have,” she said. “We don’t do cash or credit, but we will write you a slip for tax deduction, and whatever we don’t sell we give to a shelter.” Good enough for me. I left the whole lot with her, including a massive brown corduroy cape.
When I returned to the apartment, Mom and Sarah were disappointed that I hadn’t made more money. On the bright side, I said, we had cleaned out a corner of Sarah’s room.
“Wait—which corner?” Sarah asked. “Did you take the cape?”
“The cape?” I asked.
“That was Grandma’s,” Sarah said, chin quivering slightly. “She gave it to me the same day she gave you the coat that looks like a turkey.”
Back to Fifth Avenue, to plead for the brown corduroy cape. Remember that worthless clothing I threw at you? Yes, I am taking it back.
* * *
What I hadn’t counted on was that our attempt to capitalize on the move would entail reckoning with not just my childhood but my fashion sense. Had Sarah and I been bad dressers? Is Velcro actually unacceptable? Is my Betsey Johnson outfit awful? Maybe I’m not Brooklyn. Maybe I’m not even Midtown East. I’m a lady driving around New Jersey with bags of T-shirts stuffed into the trunk.
A week or so after the cape incident, I tried my luck with new bags of old clothes at Greene Street Consignment in Princeton. A college town would surely take the high heels and argyle sweaters. At the back of the store, a woman with severe blonde hair asked, “Do you have at least ten items that are all fall wear?”
“Hmm,” I said. “Can you wear jellies in the fall?”
“Just sign your name and leave it here.”
Ten minutes later, I was summoned. “I didn’t even touch this bag, because it’s all summer stuff. And here,” she said, pushing the other bag with the toe of her shoe. “We are very particular with shoes, because they are such personal items. These are scuffed. So, here you go—but thanks for trying.”
I wanted to protest: those Nine West shoes have been worn precisely once, when I was a bridesmaid at a very elegant wedding at which Martha Stewart—Martha Stewart —was a guest and she told me I looked lovely. Instead, I kept quiet and walked back to the car. I stood for several moments before the open trunk brimming with unwanted things, old clothing pressed into tired folds.
The bags are still there. Whenever I unlock my car, a line from a Spencer Short poem resonates in my head: “each of us rooting around / in our tattered gunny sack of desire & neuroses.” I tell myself I will give it all away when I find the right place.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien is a reporter at the Record, in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Illustration by Hannah K. Lee.
