.. It's a cotton thing, with a sharp & colourful plaid design. It is reserved and anxious. Worry luminates from its buttons, but its hard to accept because the way it holds its collar up. It has been hanging, waiting for a while, but as the cupboard door creaks open, there is hope. We have the scoop.
Seven Questions with
a Button-Down Shirt. -staff-
Where are you from?Most recently I have been draping a wooden coat hanger suspended on an attic rack. Before that, when I was in style, I was neatly folded to form perfect wrinkles for the style itself. Before that I was in the back of a local clothier, where, with many of my brothers, we argued who was the purest, the finest congelation of cotton. I’ve felt that I have come from many places and processes, and in that sense I feel a bit fractured.
What is your first memory?
Bright, energy efficient lighting falling on my breast pocket. There was a husky Asian woman digging her nails into my forming seams. She had this look on her, it was complete order, and to this day I remember it like the time my collar button popped. This women, you would have quaked to see how orderly she was; her nails were not for her vanity, they were for me.
How has the last year been?
Frayed. As you can see, I am a loose fitting thing, and since the consumer lost his girlfriend, he hasn’t been so comfortable with wearing me. The turtlenecks are getting all the attention, and rubbing my face in it, because in the summer I usually teased them that they were all function, no style. Rob (the body I wrap myself around) is wearing these turtlenecks daily and its still warm out. I suspect he is falling victim to current fashion. He must be trying to find a new girlfriend so that he can wear me again.
Does this upset you?
I’m not that worried, to be honest with you. I’ve been so lucky to last these three years with Rob. Most shirts have a home for maybe two years, max, before they get lost in the shuffle of clothing drives and hand me downs. I don’t want to have someone else’s chest hair rubbing at my pocket.
What are your issues right now?
My issues… hmmm. My issues… mothballs, not so much the balls but the smell. I don’t want to become a stinky old shirt. I don’t want to be brought out for novelty’s sake. Like I said already, I want to be of comfort. I want to be a resort; old faithful like that fucking dog who’s piss has been cleaned up by so many of my fallen cogarments.
Any Regrets?
I wish I wasn’t made with a button at my breast pocket. That’s it though. There is really nothing I can do about myself. I am destiny’s fool. Rob is so destiny.
What about goals? Are you aware that tailors and second hand surplus stores are giving new life to done shirts… sometimes shirts just like you are repositioned as “symbolic” fashion.
Beyond hoping, there is little I can do. My goal is to avoid those things. This whole second-hand circuit, I don’t know much about it, only from the ex-girlfriends laundry. Now, mind you, that broken, tired look is what she was wanting to achieve, but the bodies, the chests have no understanding of our need for place. Home for bodies is slunked into something cushy. For us it’s slinked into the soft flesh of a good warm chest. Just compare it to a bed. Soft cushion, but stiff support. Is there any other way to go?
The end of the peel...
... here to counter all that chinese food