Still Holding On

Photography by Callie Kennedy

About every three months, I go through my clothing to decide what I want to donate and what I want to keep. The last time I did this, I noticed something interesting. The ‘keep’ pile always has around three items that don’t fit me, but that I never throw away. And I finally realized why. It’s because of the stories and memories that these clothing items hold. With that in mind, I interviewed three Emerson students on clothing items they keep and why. 

Thomas Akiona, ‘22: 

The clothing items I still own are Christmas themed Hawaiian shirts. I would get a new one every year at [the] Christmas Eve dinners we had at my great grandparents’ house. There are a handful of deceased relatives who would be present at those events and they would always comment on how nice the shirts looked and how I was growing into them, but they [his grandparents] just aren’t around anymore. I thought about throwing them away when I was moving to college; I wondered, “What am I going to do with these because I can’t fit any of them?”, but then I decided to pack them away because if and when I have children, maybe they'll fit them.

I am a sentimental person in a lot of areas of life, but with clothes specifically, there are certain items that I could never get rid of. There are emotional attachments to clothing items whether it be the person who gave it to you or the time period in which it was given to you [even] if it was a really good time in your life or, equally, a really bad time in your life, you tend to place those things to a certain [level of] importance. 

Jane Moritz, ‘22: 

A clothing item that I still own that is very sentimental to me is this T-shirt from my elementary school. It has a really quirky font that says the name of my elementary school and this homemade-looking drawing of a lion, which was our school’s mascot. It’s also bright, tomato-red. It reminds me of being on the playground at my elementary school and it’s a daily reminder to be more open and to have more fun. In high school, I did this cleanse through my closet and got rid of a lot of clothes, but kept this shirt. I like the idea of having it in a box and looking at it when I’m older and remember that I wore it as a child.

This shirt is such a simple thing that can remind me of a lot of memories It reminds me of a big era of my life and that's why I keep it. I think some people keep certain clothing items because [they were] wearing clothes [during certain] memories so they can be like ‘I was wearing that when I was proposed to,’ or ‘When I broke up with my first boyfriend I was wearing this,’ it has a memory or feeling attached to it. 

Cristian Ganges, ‘20: 

I still own a pair of Reebok Zigs, they’re the black ones with the blue bottoms. I got them in 6th grade, [and] although they don’t fit me at all and are beaten up, I don’t let my parents throw them away. The significance of the shoe is the fact that when my mom purchased them for me, we didn’t have much money, so when she [did], it was a really big deal for me and I was really grateful. I felt so awful that she was paying so much money for shoes when we had much bigger things to worry about. The guy at the store also sold her on the fact that my feet face outward and because of that I had to buy these special insoles, so she bought the soles too, which were an extra $20.

I remember wearing them when I played basketball. At the time John Wall was one of my favorite basketball players and promoted these shoes, [and] I would wear them because it made me feel and think [that] I was [like] John Wall. It motivated me to play better. I have way too many clothes and I have a really hard time giving them away, sometimes I think, “I don’t really care about this, but it was gifted to me by someone I care about,” and you kinda feel like a bad person giving it away. I have never thought about throwing these shoes away and I don’t think I ever will.